You know you got a hot product when a U.S. Army contractor wants it. That's just the case for Apple who landed a $5.8 million contract. This contract is for a 1,566 Xserve G5 machines. This will be Apple's second supercomputer (first one was with Virginia Tech) that packs a punch of 15 teraflops. This new supercomputer will be running "Army simulations of the aerodynamics of flight", but this setup won't be complete till fall 2004.
A U.S. Army contractor has purchased a $5.8 million, 1,566-server supercomputer from Apple Computer, a real-world cousin to an academic system that briefly appeared high on a list of the most powerful machines.
In November, a machine called System X with 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5 workstations climbed to third place on the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers. On Monday, Huntsville, Ala.-based Colsa announced it's buying a larger system called MACH 5 to run Army simulations of the aerodynamics of flight much faster than the speed of sound. System X, which vanished from the most recent list for upgrades, had sustained performance of 10.3 trillion calculations per second, or "teraflops." The Colsa system, made of dual-processor Xserve G5 machines, is expected to reach about 15 teraflops when it's up and running this fall, said project manager Mike Whitlock.
By comparison, the fastest system on a new version of the Top500 list, NEC's Earth Simulator, runs at a speed of 35.8 teraflops, and only one other system exceeded 15 teraflops. Hewlett-Packard and IBM dominate the market for high-performance technical computing, with sales of $1.79 billion and $1.62 billion, respectively, in 2003, according to researcher IDC. But Apple is angling for its own share. It has released management software to control large groups of servers, and it sells models geared for supercomputing cluster use with unneeded components stripped out.
News source: C|Net News.com
A U.S. Army contractor has purchased a $5.8 million, 1,566-server supercomputer from Apple Computer, a real-world cousin to an academic system that briefly appeared high on a list of the most powerful machines.
In November, a machine called System X with 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5 workstations climbed to third place on the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers. On Monday, Huntsville, Ala.-based Colsa announced it's buying a larger system called MACH 5 to run Army simulations of the aerodynamics of flight much faster than the speed of sound. System X, which vanished from the most recent list for upgrades, had sustained performance of 10.3 trillion calculations per second, or "teraflops." The Colsa system, made of dual-processor Xserve G5 machines, is expected to reach about 15 teraflops when it's up and running this fall, said project manager Mike Whitlock.
By comparison, the fastest system on a new version of the Top500 list, NEC's Earth Simulator, runs at a speed of 35.8 teraflops, and only one other system exceeded 15 teraflops. Hewlett-Packard and IBM dominate the market for high-performance technical computing, with sales of $1.79 billion and $1.62 billion, respectively, in 2003, according to researcher IDC. But Apple is angling for its own share. It has released management software to control large groups of servers, and it sells models geared for supercomputing cluster use with unneeded components stripped out.
News source: C|Net News.com
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I hope this is the beginning of (more) good things to come for apple.
I'd say it better demonstrates the government's ability to blow extra cash for no reason.
It would be nice if someone could have their own SuperComputer at home just to say they have one.
So...$5.8 million for 15 teraflops, or $1.79 billion for 35.8 teraflops. This is odd...Apple being affordable? What's this world coming to??
When did the article say that 35.8 teraflops cost 1.79 billion?
Thats sales of... not sold for..
source: http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/11/05.11.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Simulator
And according to the convertor I used that is about 66 million dollars. Not sure if it was more or less at the time of building.
Still... substantial cost difference.
what a waste of my tax dollars
Duh!
Do you think supercomputers are free or unnecessary in military research if only the contract bidding process doesn't include Apple or something?
No kidding, what does the military need with new computers? Didn't they already have a perfectly good ENIAC?
Even if they got a bulk discount, in the end it's apple. I'm sure it would have made a better financial decision if it wasn't a mac.
Don't get me wrong i'm not anti mac, but i don't see macs having an advantage over PC's when it comes to army simulations and they probably cost more than an amd or intel alternative
So... either show some proof, or stop saying baloney like: "I'm sure it would have made a better financial decision if it wasn't a mac." Because it is completely unfounded.
A Mac is a PC
just know this, macs are inferior to amd/intel PCs despite what apple.com tells you.
if you don't believe it, ignorance is bliss i guess
I"m not going to bother getting into an argument with a PC fanboy like you as to which is a better/faster general purpose computer because you don't even understand the difference between a supercomputer cluster and a desktop/server.
Look at the numbers for the VT Cluster and then look at the price and number of machines in the other clusters on the list and consider that the VT cluster was using non-ECC memory so it was slowed down by error-correction calculations.
This new Army cluster will use ECC memory and the Yahoo News version of the story says they will achieve 25 TFLOPs and claim the 2nd place on the Top 500 list.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20040622/bs_nf/25506
Last edited by 18285 on 22 Jun 2004 - 21:19
Just know this: people who are most likely FAR more informed than you (Virginia Tech and this Army Contractor) believe that the Mac was the superior system.
And, as I have stated already, we have the Top500 benchmarking, and we have costs for these systems.
You are the one who is ignorant and have provided ZERO information.
Enjoy your bliss.
Last edited by 9953 on 22 Jun 2004 - 20:35
Even if they got a bulk discount, in the end it's apple. I'm sure it would have made a better financial decision if it wasn't a mac.
Don't get me wrong i'm not anti mac, but i don't see macs having an advantage over PC's when it comes to army simulations and they probably cost more than an amd or intel alternative
you are obviously anti-mac or just plain ignorant.
of course you don't see an advantage because you don't see anything. you have no knowledge on this subject matter whatsoever and yet you're trying to pretend you do. do yourself a favor and go look at the supercomputer cost versus performance lists and then come back and try to argue that amd/intel would be cheaper. maybe you'll be smart enough to realize based on the hard facts how wrong you are (but at this point i think even that is beyond your capabilities).
the problem is contract bidding process can be manipulated by higher ups...
Does he really expect us to believe him based on this? Does he really think Apple has more clout and pull in Washington than Intel, HP, IBM, Dell, Microsoft....?
Are we supposed to think that bid evaluators for the DOD are locked away in the Pentagon Photoshopping pictures of Paris Hilton on their iMacs while jamming out to Eminem on their iPods or something? That this bid was awarded either on Apple's manipulation of the process or the love of the people involved for their Macs?
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... I'm a Mac user and I couldn't possibly be that delusional.... For someone who is so clearly a Mac hater, despite your foolish claims to the contrary, you would have to think an awful lot of Apple to think they have more clout in government than the usual crew of PC providers, wouldn't you? Or is it that YOU believe in RDF maybe? Jesus! Did I say: "Ha, ha, ha" yet?
Last edited by 9953 on 23 Jun 2004 - 00:17
printf "The next hostile country is and must be punished is...."
for i=1 to 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999
choice=random(6)
next i
if choice=1 then printf "Japan"
if choice=2 then printf "France"
if choice=3 then printf "Canada"
if choice=4 then printf "Tacos Bell" ' Mexico
if choice=5 then printf "Korea"
if choice=6 then printf "Al Gore"
printf "do you want to nuke it?"
input nuke
if nuke="no" then ' doesn't nothing.
if nuke="n" then ' doesn' nothing
nukeit() ' ;-)
end
printf "The next hostile country is and must be punished is...."
for i=1 to 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999
choice=random(6)
next i
if choice=1 then printf "Japan"
if choice=2 then printf "France"
if choice=3 then printf "Canada"
if choice=4 then printf "Tacos Bell" ' Mexico
if choice=5 then printf "Korea"
if choice=6 then printf "Al Gore"
printf "do you want to nuke it?"
input nuke
if nuke="no" then ' doesn't nothing.
if nuke="n" then ' doesn' nothing
nukeit() ' ;-)
you crazy man. hahahaha
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