Virginia Tech Announces Supercomputer Plans 419
CousinVinnie writes "Previously noted in this Slashdot story, the administration of Virginia Tech has announced they're puchasing 1100 G5's (another story) in hopes to build a top-10 supercomputer by October 1. Tech will be spending $5.2 million over five years on the project, which should help it pull in more research money." Maybe VT can use the new computers to beef up their web site.
This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)
-WS
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Insightful)
G5: We have a PowerPc system that has been extended to use 64 bits. Your old software will run. Your new software will run faster. We have MacOSx, BSD, and Linux available, natively compiled.
There is also something to be said for the G5's parallel memory busses. It divides the ram in half, each half feeding 32 bits of the processor. You could theoretically keep your instructions on one side and data on the other, and pipeline the snot out of it.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
multibanked ram is nothing new. it's been around since the 486 days for consumers (iirc), and much earlier in big machines, i'm sure. afaik, most mobosthese days are at least 128bits wide. my alpha (up2000+) is 256.
You could theoretically keep your instructions on one side and data on the other, and pipeline the snot out of it.
which would just be slower. 8)
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, my old Macintosh 9600 had a 128-bit wide memory bus if you used identical ram in each of the 12!! RAM slots.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, look at an old sparc sometime. Sparc 1/1+/2 had 16 ram slots, circa 1990. Of course, you had to fill 4 at a time. The max is 128 MB i think.
~Will
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I admin a cluster of Itaniums. They are very fast and have not had one single hint of a problem with them.
To me, something that is completely unacceptable about the G5s for scientific use is that the machines do not support ECC memory!
My users run up to 5 days at a time across 8-10 processors, and its not cool to get a wrong answer after that run, and possibly never know about it.
I personally would not care to admin a cluster
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:4, Insightful)
FIRST reliable supercomputing facility... (Score:5, Informative)
Or so they claim here. [vt.edu] It seems they have all their bases covered and don't give a damn about ECC for a reason.
[Srinidhi Varadarajan, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, and Jason Lockhart, director of the College of Engineering's High Performance Computing and Technology Innovation, initiated the venture at Virginia Tech. Varadarajan is an expert in reliability, a key issue in successfully exploiting terascale computing.]
They keep on going:
[Component failures are endemic to any large-scale computational resource. While previous generations of supercomputers engineered reliability into systems hardware, today's high performance computing environments are based on inexpensive clusters of commodity components, with no systemic solution for the reliability of total machine.]
And now for the solution for your reliability problem.
[Virginia Tech has the first comprehensive solution to the problem of transparent fault tolerance, which enables large-scale supercomputers to mask hardware, operating system and software failures - a decades old problem. It's a software program called Deja vu, designed by Varadarajan. He also integrated the software with Apple's G5s. This work will enable the terascale computing facility to operate as the first reliable supercomputing facility, according to Varadarajan, a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award recipient.]
So maybe, just maybe, you and other people could:
1. READ before posting.
2. Then READ a little more.
3. Did I say READ already.
-sigh- Whatever.Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, Macs are really bad for scientific research work. [apple.com] No one with a brain would ever use a cluster of them for science. [apple.com] Science requires the Wintel hegemony [apple.com]. -1, troll it, baby.
Re:Apple marketroid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apple marketroid (Score:4, Interesting)
There are an awful lot of scientists using Macs for their research and work. I use them almost exclusively now after retiring my SGI's in favor of the OS X boxes and judging from the meetings I attend, I would say Macs have anywhere from 10-40% penetrance in science depending upon the subfield. For instance the last vision meeting I attended (ARVO, the big one for the vision research community), there were Powerbooks and iBooks everywhere. Probably a good 33% of the laptops I saw.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, like
One night, I was processing these gene sequences on my Itanium cluster, you know? When all of a sudden it went berserk, the screens started flashing, and, like, the whole result set just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good result set! I had to cram and resequence it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed thesis wasn't nearly as good, and I blame those Itaniums for the funding didn't get, and tenure I lost.
I'm happy to report that my sister and I now share an Apple G5 cluster. It's a lot nicer to work on than my old Itanium farm was, it hasn't let me down once, and my papers have all been really good.
Thanks, Apple.
Ellen Feiss, PhD
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, yes. And they are mailed to me nightly. I usually get 1 or 2 correctable errors a week.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Funny)
infinity - 7.3 I think.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
This is ENTIRELY unlike the x86 architecture, which has been extended to support 32-bit from 16-bit, and now is being extended YET AGAIN to support 64-bit from 32-bit from 16-bit.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:2)
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
Apple uses HyperTransport. It is in the custom chip they designed and IBM manufactures for them. It is only for the memory controller though. The FSB bus on the G5/970 is IBM's Elastic Bus. It is very similar to HyperTransport but not technically the same thing.
There's an excellent discussion at Ars [infopop.net] on this.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:3, Informative)
The PowerMac G5 machines use Hypertransport to connect their motherboard chipsets together. This is nothing new, the XBox does this as well. Hypertransport is a very good, low-cost, high performance solution for connection chips together directly. However, connecting motherboard chipsets together doesn't do much of anything for g
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Both Dell and HP have recently announced large clusters, so that may be why they were unable to deliver in time.
Re:This is quite cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, considering that the G5 has many of the architectural features of those $40k SGI Octanes that I purchased a few years ago, I would consider that pretty impressive. In short, Apple designed the G5 machines with completely independent busses, so that saturating say an I/O bus will not have any effect on the throughput of say memory to CPU. They are pretty impressive and I can see why many folks who are currently using the Octanes etc... would want new G5's.
So, you have a UNIX box with true plug and play, 64-bit, nice GUI, full CLI access, Firewire, USB, REALLY nice archetecture etc...etc...etc... All that makes for a pretty convincing argument for clusters moving to the G5's
Argument for G5 here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to see the arguments for the different platforms!
I think the argument for G5 came from here [mac.com].
Yikes.. (Score:2, Interesting)
1100 G5's...that should corner the market for about a week...and give Apple a small boost to it's bottom line..
cray (Score:4, Funny)
You call this Postum?
[bashes a 5-feet high pile of paper]
Burns: You call this a tax return?
[bangs a CRAY with his cane]
Burns: You call this a supercomputer?
Performance comparisons... (Score:5, Funny)
You should watch out (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Performance comparisons... (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't both fruits that grow from trees?
How about comparing sea water and comets?
Re:Performance comparisons... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem will be finding a desk big enough to fit the guys...
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Funny)
(Sigh) Quitters.
Re:Maybe... (Score:2)
It'll also be one of the five largest desks in the world [appleturns.com].
Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Many companies build physically smaller machines that still pack a lot of power, or sell parts to allow someone to design their own layout in a
Re:Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple specifically engineered these systems to be quiet - the compartments are set up the way they are so they can get maximum airflow with minimal blowing. Just because you think "loud" when you hear nine fans doesn't mean they're actually any louder than anything else. You're spreading FUD.
it's built to cater to the end user, not to the embedded machine market.
Perhaps your definition of "embedded" is different from mine, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit this application. This is a supercomputer cluster. However you are correct that these machines were designed to be desktop computers. Apparently that's not all they're good for.
Many companies build physically smaller machines that still pack a lot of power,
Yeah, so does Apple, but these are faster.
or sell parts to allow someone to design their own layout in a chassis.
If Virginia Tech wants to order 1,100 of them, don't you think Apple would be flexible if this was a concern?
Remember, individual cases, power supplies, and the like become way overkill in such a large computer, and it would probably be cheaper to convert electricity once for a large section of the computer, supplying 12v, 5v, and 3.3v without each computer converting itself.
This is an interesting point I hadn't considered. Feeding 110v into each of 1,100 individual power supplies can't be as energy or heat efficient as what you describe. However, it's possible that they will actually be doing this - I don't think I've seen it mentioned anywhere.
Another consideration - apparently VT was pressed for time [appleturns.com] and they needed something that would be available quickly; Apple was able to deliver quickly. This may explain why they'd be more inclined to use stock off-the-shelf boxes instead of something more customized.
Re:Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:4, Interesting)
They are very quiet (Score:2, Interesting)
http://homepage.mac.com/aaronsteele/iMovieTheater
Re:Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:2)
You must not have ever been in a machine room. They are all pretty noisy and cold.
OSX/Darwin does work fairly well, but I'd think that the entire purpose of this computer originally would make it ill-suited to this task
Compute nodes are pretty stripped down. All they really need to do is run one app per cpu. The standard *NIX tools like rsh, rcp, nfs (optional), etc are all you need.
Remember, individual cases, power supplies, and the like become w
Re:Apple ... supercomputer...? (Score:2)
Have you ever seen/touched/heard a real live G5? The fans go on and off as-needed--all the fans don't run full bore at all times. Sure, there'll be some noise, but ultimately, not an unbearable amount. (Unlike our AMD core server units we've purchased... Those sound like propeller aircraft taking off.)
Anyone have any real specs? (Score:5, Interesting)
So far we've seen that it's a cluster and what the building blocks are. What's the interconnect? What's the OS? What are the nodes using for a network filesystem? Are they at all? Is this intended for parallel jobs or for embarassingly parallel work?
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that 1100*$3000 = $3M. This doesn't include the 4GB RAM, but also doesn't include any volume discounts. Thus the interconnect may cost about $2M.
Oh, and to the guy who said "4 Athlons + Myranet is the same price as one G5" -- can I have some of what you're smoking?
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:2)
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:2)
"Slow Down Cowboy"
And now I'm typing to wait on
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, according to this story [technewsworld.com], the cluster will be running "a beta version of the latest release of OS X", presumably a beta version of Panther.
If this is true, I'd bet, and this is purely a guess, that Panther and XCode [apple.com], the new development tool built by Apple, have some support for cluster applications. With technologies like Rendezvous on top of Mach/BSD, it could mean beowulf style supercomputers that are both fast and easy to maintain.
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:3, Informative)
From the article that I linked to:
"In addition to the G5 machines, the university said it is using a beta version of the latest release of OS X, new networking hardware from Mellanox and Cisco, and cutting-edge configuration and cooling technologies to build the powerful cluster for a fraction of the price of a traditional supercomputer."
(emphasis mine)
Now, you can take that any way
Re:Anyone have any real specs? (Score:2)
I'd personally probably pick Black Lab [terrasoftsolutions.com] on Yellow Dog Linux -- it's specifically developed for clustering, and includes libraries tuned for Altivec. Not that I don't like SuSE (I run it on my Thinkpad), but SuSE PPC is still at version 7.3, while Intel is at 8.2.
Specs from an involved student... (Score:5, Informative)
The cluster will eventually run Mac OS 10.27... he said eventually, and Jason Lockhart, the project leader, is a friend and fellow Linux geek of mine (please don't hammer his inbox
Interconnectivity will be done with Cisco equipment, among the onboard gigabit LANs. Infiniband cards will also eventually be installed for 10 Gbit throughput.
You guys can offer alternative solutions and troll this as much as you want, but this is what VT is going with. In my opinion, it's not a bad choice... the New IBM PPC chipset is balls-to-the-wall computing, and Apple's 'stock' offerings in the G5 (Gbit ethernet, serial ATA, etc.) are all strong selling points. The fact that this cluster is intended for intense vector and matrix-based algorithms is another bonus, b/c of the PPC vector processing unit.
Apparently Apple shifted us up to the top of their production ladder, in order to make the contract, thereby extending the wait times for consumers itching for a G5... I find that a little humorous. Can't wait to see gigaflop statistics!!
Rumors getting closer (Score:4, Interesting)
Those who are possible volunteer recruits, there is an info session in Andrews ISB in the Corp. Research Center at 7:30 tonight and tomonrrow night (same presentation both nights). You *cannot* be on wage for VT to be elegible. I'm not sure if GAs count as this, since I'm not one, I didn't check.
Obligitory Troll (Score:5, Funny)
1) Itaniums are for pussies.
2) Go Apple!
3) Opterons still kick the G5's butt.
4) I can't wait to run doom3 on my backordered G5.
5) People griping about apples proprietary hardware and software, and how this cluster could have been built cheaper from oem parts, and ebay ethernet hubs.
6)Dumb lists summarizing other trolls.
Even more info ... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the article from which the Collegiate Times article has paraphrased: http://www.technews.vt.edu/Archives/2003/Sept/035
What the hell do you do with 1100 mice? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell do you do with 1100 mice? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell do you do with 1100 mice? (Score:2, Funny)
Feed an army of robotic cats?
Re:What the hell do you do with 1100 mice? (Score:2)
Memory ? (Score:2)
PowerMac G5s? (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't seen one, but it looks like the PowerMac G5s are about 4U wide. 1100 x 4U = 4400U / 42 per rack ~= 105 racks.
Not only is this going to take up an enormous amount of room, but the power and cooling requirements are going to be crazy as well. And they don't have rails so getting them in the racks, and working on them once in the rack, is going to be a PITA.
1100 G5 Xserves would need only about 25 racks. Many fewer UPSes and A/C units to power in each rack. Much easier to install and work on.
I know Apple is gung-ho about this validating their "Fastest PC Ever" claims. But it seems a little poorly thought out on the University's part even if they got a sweet up-front price on the machines. Remember: the system price is a small part of TCO.
Re:PowerMac G5s? (Score:2)
Re:PowerMac G5s? (Score:2)
Re:PowerMac G5s? (Score:2)
Remember: the system price is a small part of TCO.
Really. My system cost about $1mil and over 5 years it will cost less than $350,000 to run (cooling, electricity, rent, and me). Hell, after I pay my SCO licenses (NOT!) it would only be another $100k or so.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PowerMac G5s? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember - the CPU and the memory are going to generate the same number of BTU/hour whether in a tower case or a 2U rack. And going to the *as yet unannounced* 2U just makes the cooling problem worse...
Yes, we thought a LOT about these sort of issues.
Re:PowerMac G5s? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's platform will probably work here, and once they prove it does, they will open a new segment of buyers, and gain plenty of positive attention. Apple's (recent) record suggests they will exceed expectations.
As to the cost...the good PR that they can derive from a working G5 supercomputer is easily worth $10m on hardware. At the end of the quarter it's hardly noticable to a company sitting on $3,500,000,000.00 in cash.
Apple gets to show MSFT they can scale OS X way past Windows. IBM gets to show Intel what it thinks of the Blue Lightning License arrangement, and Apple and IBM, by virtue of being together, get so give MSFT the finger...from way up the (top500.org) list. Not bad for their first try at this.
--
Don't forget that Pixar's always looking for high power hardware and they've got lots of new money.
Their Website (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really a dupe (Score:3, Interesting)
Floppy memory?? (Score:3, Insightful)
For the supercomputer to break the top five supercomputers in the world, it would have to possess 10 teraflops of memory.
I think that they mean 10teraflops of computing power, as opposed to 10terabytes of memory -- since the later would require each CPU to have 10GB of ram in it. Nonetheless, the anomaly tells me that this is a reporter not used to computer issues. (too few computer geeks at the college paper).
Ever changing focus shift.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember Be, the "multimedia" OS turned "Internet Appliance". Remember the death of Be. (damn, that stings. I miss the BeOS.)
Now witness Apple:
For decades, seemingly the darling of the press-production (DTP) world, catering to artists of all magnitudes, it was the computer you used to create real, bona-fide art. It attracted the freaks, the hippies, the art chicks. For many people, this was unnerving. Different people get "different" looks.
Now who's Apple targetting?
With OS X, I'm thinking geeks. We're different people, too, but in a, well, different manner. Instead of the artists, Apple's going for traditional suits, the realm of IT. It may be a matter of sheer survival that Apple penetrates here, because they don't stand a chance in these days of "homogenous" work environments.. Out with Apple (even if it works) and in with Dell WinXP machines! Linux faces the same dilemna, although Linux has some other benefits/detriments for it's widespread adoption. If Apple can show it's worth in the server room (just like Linux is doing), then maybe, just maybe, they'll start looking at Apple on the corporate desktop (just like Linux is doing).
Now, the idea of catering to suits is somewhat.. frightening. The whole damn market is different. They don't care about "look and feel", they care about numbers (see economic downturn, outsourcing to India, massive layoffs, H1B abuse, etc). This means Apple will have to change from being "cool" to utilitarian. But wait, I think I just painted myself into a corner here... Wasn't that the point of Apple? To be a tool and not an obstacle? Instead of creating computer art, we're now creating databases? Maybe Apple is on to something here...
Wayback machine (Score:2)
"Beef up their Website" (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I missing something, or was that just a completely random comment?
Re:"Beef up their Website" (Score:5, Informative)
For those out of the loop, network virginia [networkvirginia.net] is a partnership between verizon (local loops), sprint (borders and pipes), and Virginia tech (expertise and tech support). A few years ago, they had 2 OC-3's from Northern Va to roanoke, 1 to richmond, and 1 from roanoke to richmond. Their updated network topology map can be found by clicking here [networkvirginia.net]. The bottom one is the latest one. At any rate, they've got multiple OC-12's running from Nova to Roanoke, mainly because of VT. Tech may already be hooked into the OC-12's, i'm not sure.
Also, I'm not sure about how much will be lost in clustering, but according to the CT article today, the dual 2.0 Ghz G-5 can pull 14 teraflops by it's self. If we're getting 1100 of them, say, drop ~10% for overhead, that would still put us up at 14000 teraflops, which is ahead of ascii white and behind los alamos.
Also: regarding power requirements and all of that - we have several state of the art facilities on campus for this kind of stuff, including the VT Corporate research center and Torgersen hall (home of the center for advanced computing and where we keep all the fun VR rooms and stuff). There's a power plant on campus. We never lost power when I lived in a dorm, not during snow storms or huge thunderstorms or anything. It supplies power for most of blacksburg, too. Shameless plug, but that's one selling point for the company where I work, netmar [netmar.com], because we get our power from the VT power plant, and it's about 2.5 blocks away, we hardly ever lose power for more than 2 minutes, so we haven't had to put our generators to work in forever. Nowadays, we just test them with the remote start to make sure they're working, and to scare people that are hanging around the generator hut.
Anyway, VT has no problems finding a place for these things to go, and will have no problem providing power for them. Climate control should be no problem, either. For starters, it's easy to cool things in blacksburg, cause it hasn't been above 100 degrees in 100 years here.
Some people in my econ class today were talking about why are we doing it, and what's it going to be used for. Really, I think we're doing it to get grant money and sponsorships/funding, because with the economic situation in VA, we're scrambling to find money. We've had to drop teachers without replacing them and cut back on services all over (no more trash cans in dorm hallways, you have to take your own trash outside, can't afford the maintinance staff). Also, the Vet school will get a lot of use out of it. That's the "virginia-maryland regional college of veteranary medicine". They're looking for ways to cure problems with small bacteria instead of drugs (i'm not clear on the particulars, that's the impression i got). They're going to try and track what happens to something when it's introduced into an animal or something. Anyway, they'll use it, as will VT's engineering school, which, despite being tied for like 73rd on the list of top schools, and inexplicably 55 positions behind UVA, is an excellent program and produces excellent engineers.
~Will
Sounds fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Among the top complaints were:
You could buy several AMD's for that.
You might be able to, but the G5's they are buying already have 2 very good processors. As long as they're dividing up tasks among processors, it's nice to have all the memory management and overhead taken care of at a level of two processors per node instead of one. To be honest, I've never seen it done before, and it could have very interesting results.
The Mac's aren't designed for this sort of thing.
We don't know all the details of this cluster because they weren't all mentioned in the story, but my hunch is that Apple might cater to them a little if they are offering to dump $5 mill on a cluster. They might package the cases differently (sans curvy plastic or with shared power supplies).
Anyway, when it comes to speed of high precision calculations, the G* chips have proven their worth. And most High Science applications fall into that range of operation. We all know that clustering and distrubuting is touchy. The cost and speed don't scale linearly. And the cost vs speed ratio definately doesn't scale literally.
There is a possibility these computer science professors know something. So we might want to see how this thing performs before we rush to judgement.
I keep overestimating slashdot... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I keep overestimating slashdot... (Score:3, Interesting)
The real news isn't the super computer (Score:3, Funny)
What will happen next, dogs and cats living together? Mass hysteria?
OS X 10.3 (Score:4, Funny)
What's the long-term plan? (Score:2, Insightful)
The G5 really is all that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Time for a new icon (Score:3, Funny)
Umm... OK.... (Score:3, Informative)
and then I wonder why you would spend $5mil dollars over the next 5 years to build a supercomputer? It seems like a better idea would be to reach out to the slahsdot/linux communities and see what kind of equipment they could get donated/free and then build a semi-super computer with that - or hell even just buy a shitload of cheap pc's to do it with....
maybe i'm just missing something...
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that very much depends on what type of computing you're doing. Some scientific computing is more tolerant of high-latency environments and would rather have the bandwidth.
I can't seem to find the quote from any of the articles right now, but VT is planning on using an Infiniband interconnect from Mellanox. While I don't know the relative price points, they are touting the fact that this is a high-speed interconnect that's faster than Myrinet or Quadrics at a fraction of the cost. I can't say for sure, since the Infiniband cluster we're helping to build at Stanford is not yet assembled.
This should be interesting to watch. I'll be very interested to see the $/gigaflop ratio for VT's cluster (though that doesn't have a bearing on the interconnect).
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Overpriced G5s (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why g5 (Score:2)
Re:why g5 (Score:2)
I would buy some rare *insert collector item here* and make a normal faster/cheaper/better cluster!!!
Re:why g5 (Score:2)
Eh, Virginia's tuition problems come from doing away with the car tag tax in the '90s, not building a supercomputer on the cheap in hte 'oughts.
Re:But WHY? (Score:2)
Re:1100 G5s or PC processors ... (Score:2)
As another /. user pointed out, G5's do have an upgrade path. It's an IBM mainframe...
Re:1100 G5s or PC processors ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainframes have one job: to move data from point A to point B as quickly as possible, while doing a relatively minor amount of processing on the way. Mainframes are what you use when you want to process every ATM transaction that happens around the world, all at the same time. In fact, your average mainframe is not really any more powerful than a dual- or quad-CPU Intel server, raw processing wise.
Supercomputers are the exact opposite. They're stacks and stacks of CPU's that process largely independent chunks of data. They do huge amounts of processing on each chunk of data. They do *not* move data particularly well. In many cases, supercomputers are held together with Gigabit Ethernet. That's not exactly *fast*...
Different computers, different tasks.
Re:Too expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
Opteron: Still under development.
Now tell me, on the Good/Fast/Cheap curve you design parameters lie?
Mod parent down, blatant ignorance (Score:2, Informative)
Tons of multi-Opteron systems already being sold, and for some time now.
Homeboy is mega-stupid.
Re:Too expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, deliverable this weekend if you order 1,100 of them at a time; everybody else has to wait [appleturns.com]... but yeah.
Re:The money came from a grant (Score:2)
Be nice to Tech (Score:2)
"speculation and rumor"?? On /.?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Lots of speculation and rumor, too, if you're into that sort of thing.
This is slashdot! We're all about speculation and rumor. Innuendo, too, especially on the weekends.
Oh, and sentence fragments.
Re:Are they buying the chips from Apple or IBM (Score:2, Informative)
TimeZone
Re:enjoy your tuition increases kids (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever been to VT? We've got construction going on all over the place. The football stadium is about to get another "upgrade" after having received on just a year or two ago. We've got major construction going on in at least 3 different places, not to mention many smaller construction projects.
Meanwhile teachers are getting let go, classes that were taught in 30-person rooms 3 years ago when I started, are now taught in 400+ person lecture halls.
Does it suck? Certainly. However the money for the construction projects, football stadium, and supercomputer are all from grants, donations, and other means intended for a specific purpose. They can not legally take the money from a supercomputer grant or football stadium donation and use it to pay a teacher's salary.
We have uneducated rants in the school paper at least once a week saying "why are we upgrading the football stadium if we cant pay teachers!@#$"
Yeah, it does suck, but the university has no choice in the matter.
Re:what are they going to name it? (Score:3, Funny)