The second most powerful computer on Earth is a Mac!

hulkaros

hulkaros

The Incredible...
According to this here:
http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2003-10-12#773

Here is the story, quoted:

"The G5 cluster of the University of Virginia, in the USA, is up and running, under Mac OS X (a version of Panther° Its performances were measured for the first time under the Linpack Benchmark, and scored an amazing 17,6 TFlops !

This result makes this supercomputer the second most powerful one, behind the famed Japanese Earth Simulator, and the most powerful of all United States. Not bad, when you know it cost a mere 5.2 millions dollars, half the estimated price from the competitors during the bid, and most of all, far less than the 100 millions that the other current supercomputers did cost ;)

"Big Mac" (as nicknamed by Terascale staff) will officially join the Top5 of supercomputers during the SC2003 conference, from the 15th till the 21st November.

P.S. : To help the comparison, Earth Simulator cost $ 350 millions, ASCI Q, the second best until now, cost 200 millions, and ASCI White (4th position) "only" $ 100 millions. So, pray tell, are macs still that expensive?
[translation xrissley]"

WOW! :D

;)

:)
 
For $350 millions you can set up the "Big Mac" (lol) with 74.000 Dual G5s! :D ;)
If the scale would go linear, it should be around 1.100 TFlops! ::ha::
 
Well, I was calculating just quickly. But everything seems to be ok. If you spend 350 millions, you will be able to get 70 such Big Macs and if one makes 17,6 TFlops (as hulk said), it would come to more than 1.100 TFlops. I know, this won't work, but just the thought...
Or don't you agree to those 17,6 TFlops for the Virginia cluster?
 
I think maybe he means 1100 TFlops. English uses comma to separate "thousands" ie. 1,100 whereas French uses commas to separate decimals is 1,100=1.100 in the English way of writing it.

Now, I don't know if Germany uses decimals . to separate thousands, or maybe it's just a typo ;)
 
Oops! :D
Ok, "." indicates thousands and "," regular comma such as 0,02 (German).
So, I meant 1100 TFlops! ;)

Man, this is the third time someone is complaining about my typos or grammar...
I should stop posting so frequently! ;)
 
I quoted the article EXACTLY as I found it... But it is 17.6 Tflops in case that are still wondering :D

And here you can find the Top 5 Super Computers as of June 2003:
http://www.top500.org/lists/2003/06/top5.php

If you will read closer, you will see that the G5 based Super Computer (1100x Dual G5/2GHz) is actually 2x faster than the XEON based monster (1152x Dual XEON/2.4GHz) which at that list was 3rd out of 5...

WOW!

And then some! :D

;)

:)
 
But the top dog is running 500 mHz NEC processors...

so much for the megahertz myth!
 
If the cluster only cost 5.2 million dollars, then that should be well within the budget of say pixar, or another computer animation company... They could probably spend $10 million and have the fastest computer in the world, just to do movie renderings...
 
Originally posted by pds
But the top dog is running 500 mHz NEC processors...

so much for the megahertz myth!
Click to expand...

NEC has been making great processors for a long time, both based on their own design and those of other companies. A good example would be the MIPS R3000 processors in my Silicon Graphics IRIS Indigo workstations. Sure they are an MIPS designed chip, but they were manufactured by NEC (see attached image).

Looking at both the current top 5 and the full 500 list, it is nice to see PowerPC processors very well represented. What was surprising was which PowerPC processor was listed the most... the POWER3. I surely would have expected to see the POWER4 more visibly ranked then it actually is. It looks like the G5 (PPC970) is going to pass it up on this list now and is going to displace one of the two POWER3 based systems in the top 5.
 

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"Earth Simulator"...sounds like something out of a freaky anime movie.

And wait...havn't macs always been the most powerful computers on the earth? ;)
 
Actually, it's 1100 Macs. ;)

The Earth Simulator does 36 teraflops, which is double that of the VT cluster. That's just crazy. However, the ES has over 5000 processors, whereas the VT cluster has only 2200. I bet if they had installed 2500 dual G5's, to make 5000 processors, the VT cluster would be the #1 computer in. The. World.

I wonder what that would do for my Quake game... :)
 
who cares bout Quake. Doom 3 is around the corner. now thats what i wanna play on a G5. and not on a cluster. a simple dual G5 will do the job :p with 4 Gb of memory and ATI 9800 pro. and a 20inch cinema display. is it too much to ask ? :p
 
tsizkeik...the thing under your name (its all about house music)... SO true :D

But if you had the choice, what would you (any one in general) do on the "Big Mac" cluster?
 
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