Tag: g5supercomputer

As expected, Virginia Tech’s “Big Mac” supercomputer cluster, built with 1,100 Power Mac G5s, officially ranks third among the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers. The US$5.2 million system, officially named “X,” ranked No. 3 with a performance of 10.3 trillion calculations per second, or 10.3 teraflops. The No. 1 and No. 2 systems were Japan’s Earth Simulator and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ASCI Q with performance of 35.6 teraflops and 13.8 teraflops, respectively.

Virginia Tech’s new supercomputer cluster, built from 1,100 Power Mac G5s, could be ranked fourth in the world, according to Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the list of the world’s 500 fastest machines. “The official results for the ranking will not be reported until next month at a supercomputer industry event,” the New York Times reports.

Virginia Tech told MacMinute this week that its new supercomputer cluster, which uses 1,100 Power Mac G5s, is a relative bargain compared to alternatives (such as Linux machines) and one-tenth the cost of an average supercomputer.