Virginia Tech goes Xserve G5

Hmm... I wonder if I could tell Apple that "I go PowerBook." Would they take my iBook back for a good price? ;-)

I also wonder whether the 'BigMac' processing power will increase or decrease with this change, i.e. whether the newer 90nm PPC 970 makes a difference either way. Are there any benchmarks testing those two at 2 GHz?
 
From what I read they expect a slight increase in processing power using the Xserve G5s. But the main reason was the electricity consumption and the wasted space. Am wondering if they will order a bigger cluster now..
 
or- maybe its just a ruse to let all the Virginia tech staff to take home one or two of the G5 towers? Hell, thats what i'd do in their position. :)
 
Heh... yeah, it's all a big conspiracy. ;)

I'd love to be one of those "homes" they will be sending the G5's to. Perhaps I have to enroll there? Hmm...
 
Zammy-Sam said:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040126/tech_virginiatech_apple_1.html

I wish I was an employee there to get one of those G5 powermacs...
Click to expand...

I've heard rumors that they plan to add a number of new nodes and that the replacements will be the new cluster node Xserve not the standard Xserve with three hard drives and an optical drive. I've also heard rumors that a number of the current dual 2GHz G5's will go to VTech computer labs and that some machines will be refurbed by Apple and sold as such - so look for a flood of cheap G5 refurbs from Apple this spring - hopefully the timing will coincide with a speed bump of the G5 line making the 130nm PPC 970 based dualies even cheaper. BTW the official name of the cluster is "X" not "Big Mac" - I think Big Mac would have been a cool name but McDonald's probably would have nixed that - besides I much prefer the Double Quarter Pounder to the Big Mac - john.
 
I work at UVA and very much doubt they will give these away to employee's. When we "retire" a computer (usually after 3 years) it goes to surplus then surplus puts it up for auction. I'm not sure how Va Tech works but I'm sure they will be selling most of them and maybe putting some in the school's computer labs. I think they should use some of them to set up some Mac labs instead of the usual pc labs. At my school (Architecture) we have 10 G5's and around 20 G4's. We probably have more Mac's then anywhere else in the school which is a shame. There's a couple of pc labs in the school with nearly a 100 pc's in each without any Macs. VA Tech could use these G5's to get their students using Mac's instead of pc's.
 
banditcosmo said:
I work at UVA and very much doubt they will give these away to employee's. When we "retire" a computer (usually after 3 years) it goes to surplus then surplus puts it up for auction. I'm not sure how Va Tech works but I'm sure they will be selling most of them and maybe putting some in the school's computer labs. I think they should use some of them to set up some Mac labs instead of the usual pc labs. At my school (Architecture) we have 10 G5's and around 20 G4's. We probably have more Mac's then anywhere else in the school which is a shame. There's a couple of pc labs in the school with nearly a 100 pc's in each without any Macs. VA Tech could use these G5's to get their students using Mac's instead of pc's.
Click to expand...


wow, and they're not even a year yet with the G5s
 
banditcosmo said:
I work at UVA and very much doubt they will give these away to employee's. When we "retire" a computer (usually after 3 years) it goes to surplus then surplus puts it up for auction. I'm not sure how Va Tech works but I'm sure they will be selling most of them and maybe putting some in the school's computer labs. I think they should use some of them to set up some Mac labs instead of the usual pc labs. At my school (Architecture) we have 10 G5's and around 20 G4's. We probably have more Mac's then anywhere else in the school which is a shame. There's a couple of pc labs in the school with nearly a 100 pc's in each without any Macs. VA Tech could use these G5's to get their students using Mac's instead of pc's.
Click to expand...
 
It makes sense that they'd be using Xserve Clusters... those machines are built for times when you need processor power more than anything. The regular Xserves are for hosting up files as well as providing server or processing needs, as long as you don't need the vast acres an Xserve RAID provides.
 
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