Doesn't matter where the money came from, the G5s are university (and thus state) property. They'll end up in other departments on campus, or replace some of the boxes at the Math Emporium, or fill out some computer labs. I'm positive they all have the exact same VT Inventory sticker (with a different #) thats on the eMac I'm typing this on.
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Virginia Tech PowerMac G5 to Xserve G5 Upgrade
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I think that possibly the best thing about this upgrade, assuming VT keeps the G5 towers and redistributes them throughout the schoool, is that there will likely be a huge number of people exposed to (and perhaps working primarily on) Macs.
The potential positive benefits to Apple, in terms of mindshare, and perhaps even sales, etc., are huge, if the 1100 towers end up becoming a "regular" part of life at VT.
The potential positive benefits to Apple, in terms of mindshare, and perhaps even sales, etc., are huge, if the 1100 towers end up becoming a "regular" part of life at VT.
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
We already Have macs
In Case you were not aware we already have way over 1100 macs on campus. We have a building called the math emporium with over 500 (i think around 800) flatpanel iMacs http://www.emporium.vt.edu/emporium/VisitorsWebsite/VisitorsMain.html we also have the New Media Center with a few dozen editing bays for Video and audio editing http://www.nmc.vt.edu/ the library is full of them as well as hundreds more scatered throughout the campus. I'm assumeing the Macs will stay in the engineering dept. but who knows. I plan to volenteer again for helping with the supercomputer if they ask students to volenteer again. It was fun the first time.
Also It seems like tons of kids have iPods... I'd say at least 90% of people i see listening to music are iPods... That may be jsut cause I look out for ipods
In Case you were not aware we already have way over 1100 macs on campus. We have a building called the math emporium with over 500 (i think around 800) flatpanel iMacs http://www.emporium.vt.edu/emporium/VisitorsWebsite/VisitorsMain.html we also have the New Media Center with a few dozen editing bays for Video and audio editing http://www.nmc.vt.edu/ the library is full of them as well as hundreds more scatered throughout the campus. I'm assumeing the Macs will stay in the engineering dept. but who knows. I plan to volenteer again for helping with the supercomputer if they ask students to volenteer again. It was fun the first time.
Also It seems like tons of kids have iPods... I'd say at least 90% of people i see listening to music are iPods... That may be jsut cause I look out for ipods
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
Well, speaking as someone who is currently in a graduate school working in research labs, it does matter where the money came from as to how some of the rules are applied to the resale of the hardware, etc. Now, it may not matter at VT, but again, it may.
State law applies in this case. Unless the property was leased or loaned, once it was bought for a state institution (VPI in this case) regardless of whence the funds came, it became the property of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Period. As a professor working at Tech whose spouse is a grant administrator, I know whereof I speak.
An individual computer purchased with a grant might be able to be sold or otherwise disposed of, but not an entire cluster of G5s.
xserves have 970fx
Most of the powermacs will probably be given back to apple b/c i doubt vt will spend money for an entely new system and idoubt apple will just give them xserves this also asmart move because the xserves have ppc970fx chips which can run faster so maybe apple is giving them the higher clock speeds right off.
Most of the powermacs will probably be given back to apple b/c i doubt vt will spend money for an entely new system and idoubt apple will just give them xserves this also asmart move because the xserves have ppc970fx chips which can run faster so maybe apple is giving them the higher clock speeds right off.
Exactly. It's pointless to claim that VT and other cluster buyers are wasting money on their computers because they're not as "fast" as a true supercomputer.
It obvioustly depends wildly on what you're doing, otherwise the various distributed computing projects would be pointless, since they wouldn't scale at all.
And the bottom line for VT is, I'd certanly assume that if they were preparing to spend 5 million dollars that they spent some time checking whether a cluster or monolithic supercomputer was better suited to their needs. Obviously the cluster won, so whatever they're doing, it benefits from cluster computing.
Give the guys some credit.
I didnt know this, nowonder the memory system is so fast (and the DIMMS get not warm but hot underload), is NUMA the official name for this? As far has I know the OS has to be NUMA aware to obtain the rest of the theoretical bandwidth.
As for REDSTORM CRAY isnt saying anything for now, but 10000 Opteron 2xx's with CRAY interconnects sounds cool.
Re: G5 migration to Xserve @ VT
I may be mis-recalling things here, but I believe that each node can be a different speed, but the scheduler assumes all nodes are equal and so will be less efficient with the faster nodes.
You would end up getting more processing out of a 3GHz G5 than a 2GHz G5 (assuming the cluster is set up for 2GHz G5s), but not 50% more because of the scheduling issues.
Generally speaking, you won't get your money's worth out of faster processors until the "min proc frequency" is increased. Also, it doesn't make sense to just add "whatever" processors to the cluster as that may lower your MPF and thus slow the entire cluster down.
A truly asymetric cluster would take full use of a faster processor in any one node, and adding a slow processor to the cluster would be a small net gain in performance instead of a drain on performance.
OTOH, if you didn't want an "event" upgrade and instead wanted to ease up to a faster computer base, slowly replacing the older 2GHz machines with newer 3GHz machines might be a good idea (you'd get a steady increase in performance, then a sudden jump up when the last 2GHz machine is taken off and the scheduling algorithm adjusted for the faster machines).
I may be mis-recalling things here, but I believe that each node can be a different speed, but the scheduler assumes all nodes are equal and so will be less efficient with the faster nodes.
You would end up getting more processing out of a 3GHz G5 than a 2GHz G5 (assuming the cluster is set up for 2GHz G5s), but not 50% more because of the scheduling issues.
Generally speaking, you won't get your money's worth out of faster processors until the "min proc frequency" is increased. Also, it doesn't make sense to just add "whatever" processors to the cluster as that may lower your MPF and thus slow the entire cluster down.
A truly asymetric cluster would take full use of a faster processor in any one node, and adding a slow processor to the cluster would be a small net gain in performance instead of a drain on performance.
OTOH, if you didn't want an "event" upgrade and instead wanted to ease up to a faster computer base, slowly replacing the older 2GHz machines with newer 3GHz machines might be a good idea (you'd get a steady increase in performance, then a sudden jump up when the last 2GHz machine is taken off and the scheduling algorithm adjusted for the faster machines).
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
Apple or someone close to them may be acting as a reseller for VT.
More than one of my clients in the last week have said they are seriously considering buying 100 node render farm packages being offered that use, surprise, Dual 2GHz G5 PowerMacs. All of them had been discussing Xserves with Apple before this deal popped up. None are able to comment on the particulars of the deals at this time, but one did hint these were used computers. They all seem to be considering the same packages and are currently looking at the logistics and financing for such a deal.
More than one of my clients in the last week have said they are seriously considering buying 100 node render farm packages being offered that use, surprise, Dual 2GHz G5 PowerMacs. All of them had been discussing Xserves with Apple before this deal popped up. None are able to comment on the particulars of the deals at this time, but one did hint these were used computers. They all seem to be considering the same packages and are currently looking at the logistics and financing for such a deal.
Steven1621
macrumors 6502a
What a crazy idea. Are you sure you're not a troll? 😉
If everyone here took that to heart, this thread would be a couple of pages shorter.
I am with my fellow Hokies. As a graduate student, I am well aware with purchases made by grant money. Once the Tech barcode is on something, it cannot leave Tech legally unless sold at the auction (which I highly doubt I would see these G5 there for quite awhile).
Even in cases where my research advisor gets our funding from private companies, all purchases over $2000 have to be approved and all of our instruments and computers come bearing the barcode (despite the fact that she got the money from a company and she spent it on whatever).
Several times a year, we have a team come through our labs examining EVERYTHING for inventory. If we have a computer that we do not want anymore, we need to contact them. It is rather annoying at times because I do not personally care for them poking around my personal computers....my iBook or prior when I had my personal desktop from home at my desk.
If these computers leave the Corporate Research Center, I bet they will be making their way into campus offices, labs (the new Chemistry building has chemistry labs outfited with a few G5 dual 1.8s for the undergraduates), and/or computer labs. I have no idea where they are going other than they are not going off campus. If I had to take a guess as to where a group of them would go, I would guess the Torgeson Bridge as they keep pretty modern Apples in there.
What I look forward to the most is that they are going to replace some other Mac...meaning the next Tech auction should still have some goodies. That is where I picked up a nice PowerMac G4.
Even in cases where my research advisor gets our funding from private companies, all purchases over $2000 have to be approved and all of our instruments and computers come bearing the barcode (despite the fact that she got the money from a company and she spent it on whatever).
Several times a year, we have a team come through our labs examining EVERYTHING for inventory. If we have a computer that we do not want anymore, we need to contact them. It is rather annoying at times because I do not personally care for them poking around my personal computers....my iBook or prior when I had my personal desktop from home at my desk.
If these computers leave the Corporate Research Center, I bet they will be making their way into campus offices, labs (the new Chemistry building has chemistry labs outfited with a few G5 dual 1.8s for the undergraduates), and/or computer labs. I have no idea where they are going other than they are not going off campus. If I had to take a guess as to where a group of them would go, I would guess the Torgeson Bridge as they keep pretty modern Apples in there.
What I look forward to the most is that they are going to replace some other Mac...meaning the next Tech auction should still have some goodies. That is where I picked up a nice PowerMac G4.
That 17.6 Tflops number is the current theoretical max. Actual performance is 10.6 or 10.7 or something. So still quite a ways to go 'til #2--as in more than doubling their existing power.
OTOH, as other people have pointed out, the upgrade from 1100 PMG5s to 1100 Xserve G5s should in itself provide a huge improvement in actual performance (i.e. not the benchmarks that the Top 500 uses) due to the ECC RAM. Without ECC, they're running important things twice to maintain accuracy; with it, they won't have to do that anymore.
WM
MacosRumors
There is intresting "info" over at mac os rumors about faster xServes. if they put out 2.4 GHz xserves that would make the super computer like 10% faster. getting it even closer to #2. I'm sure ole' Los Alamos isn't just slouching around. They are probably gonna need to get a new Supercomputer soon now that a 5 million dollar one can almost achieve the same performance.
There is intresting "info" over at mac os rumors about faster xServes. if they put out 2.4 GHz xserves that would make the super computer like 10% faster. getting it even closer to #2. I'm sure ole' Los Alamos isn't just slouching around. They are probably gonna need to get a new Supercomputer soon now that a 5 million dollar one can almost achieve the same performance.
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
Re: MacosRumors
For what it's worth, there are known cases of MacOSRumors making up rumors just to get hits. I'd highly suspect the rumors about "classified government contracts" as being in that catagory...
For what it's worth, there are known cases of MacOSRumors making up rumors just to get hits. I'd highly suspect the rumors about "classified government contracts" as being in that catagory...
If they keep all the G5's and distribute them across their local network, they could play with XGrid. Wonder what kind of flopping that would get?
Can there please be a new rumor already?? I'm getting bored.
-rik
Can there please be a new rumor already?? I'm getting bored.
-rik
Snowy_River
macrumors 68030
I am really surprised that no one has seen the obvious
The obvious:
Apple trades in 1100 G5s from VT for 1100 2.4Ghz XServes. It is done all at once in another big build by VT.
Apple laser-engraves the sides of these 1100 G5s with a very nice tribute to the supercomputer that these G5s were a part of and then places them on sale for a premium in the Apple store.
Everyone wins and the Big Mac becomes 20% faster.
The obvious:
Apple trades in 1100 G5s from VT for 1100 2.4Ghz XServes. It is done all at once in another big build by VT.
Apple laser-engraves the sides of these 1100 G5s with a very nice tribute to the supercomputer that these G5s were a part of and then places them on sale for a premium in the Apple store.
Everyone wins and the Big Mac becomes 20% faster.