Virginia Tech Upgrade: PowerMac G5 to Xserve G5

An anonymous reader writes "Virginia Tech officially announced that they will be migrating their G5 Supercomputer from PowerMac G5s to Xserves. According to the article, the Xserve G5s will reduce power consumption, heat production and decrease the system size by a factor of three. The pricing of the upgrade is still being determined, and according to Srinidhi Varadarajan, they are working on getting "very good homes" for the PowerMac G5s which will be replaced."

a nice incentive

[nuckin futs]

would be to reward some VT Computer Science majors.
get an A in any programming class, take home a G5.

too soon to initial install

[musikit]

when i heard about this the first thing i thought was "they just it up and running and now they are doing an upgrade?" i'm not in the cluster world does this happen often? does anyone else think that it came too soon? Or is apple giving them another deep discount to keep an Mac based computer #3 on the supercomputer chart?

Re:too soon to initial install

[BandwidthHog]

I assume this was the plan all along, but the G5 Xserve wasn't ready yet, and VTech needed the cluster online for [academic | fiscal | calendar] year '03.

What I wonder is what are they gonna do with all the extra space? Wouldn't they be able to stuff twice as many Xserves in the space occupied by the towers? Anybody know if the electrical and cooling are up to that challenge?

PowerPC 970FX

[iJed]

I wonder if the lower power PowerPC 970FX used in the Xserve has superior performance to the ordinary 970 used in the PowerMac G5...

It would also be interesting to know if the 970FX has suitable energy saving modes and a low enough power consumption to be used in a G5 PowerBook ;-)

Forward Thinking

[rampant mac]

"According to the article, the Xserve G5s will reduce power consumption, heat production and decrease the system size by a factor of three."

It may seem like a waste to upgrade a system only four months old, but the reduced power consumption will save some dollars in the long term. By ditching the towers, they also save a boatload of space...

Where they can use some some of that extra money to purchase more nodes...

To put in all that extra space...

How many more nodes would it take to surpass number 2 on the list? Or possibly give number 1 a run for its money?

I think VT may be on to something here.

Farming

[iomud]

They can toss them about the network and use them as a distributed compile [apple.com]/render [apple.com]/$distributed_task [apple.com] farm.

VATech's rise to prominance

[alexhmit01]

Absolutely an impressive school. 10 years ago, they were a joke. Now they built a national reputation via their football team, so people have heard of them, and projects like this put them on the map. When I looked at schools, they never entered the equation. If I was looking at engineering schools today, I'm sure that I would end up applying there.

This is a school with great self promotion and is going to go places. Unlike places like MIT, they don't sit on their Laurels, they are exploding.

I expect that in 20 years, they'll be considered one of the elite engineering schools. Kinda neat to have your college degree appreciate in value because the school gets better. I can't imagine that you don't get a decent engineering education at any engineering focused school, and this research project is a brilliant PR stunt.

Alex

Why upgrade to dual 2 Ghz?? They won't be 2 ghz..

[inertialmatrix]

Some people are like "Why would they upgrade from dual 2 Ghz G5 desktops, to dual 2 Ghz G5 rackmount servers??"

They won't be dual 2 Ghz G5 rackmount servers.. VTech is going to do the same thing they did when the G5's were released.. get first dibs on new inventory as soon as the new rackmount servers are released - the new 2.3Ghz rackmount servers.

Apple knows what's in it's product pipeline, and I guarantee you that they are in talks with Virginia Tech about offering their new xserves that are *yet* to be announced. You honestly think that Virgina Tech had no idea about the nee G5's prior to Steve Job's and his keynote? They are planning on upgrading their supercomputer, and they are going to be making it FASTER, and Cooler (bad pun.. I know)

Apple's marketing line is going to be: "Look, Look Not only is the 3rd fastest computer on earth powered by our G5's, but it also is run on our new XServes.. You need mission critical hardware? No problem. We build supercomputers!"


-Buddha wears grass shoes

Re:The Cost?

[Christopher Whitt]

What I never understood is why someone like IBM didn't come along and cluster 10,000 dual P4 nodes together for fun to get on the top spot. I'm sure they have the inventory to write that off.

That would be ASCI White [llnl.gov], which is currently #8 on the top 500 [top500.org]. It's an 8192-cpu Power3 machine, and they didn't do it just for fun. It was #1 on the top 500 in Nov 2000 [top500.org].

Also, #10 on the top 500 [top500.org] is a 1920-node IBM Xeon 2.4Ghz cluster, but why should IBM use Intel processors when they make their own?

Has anyone else heard.....

[Botchka]

...how loud the Xserves are compared to the G5's? I can't imagine the decibels in a room full of them. One thing they don't mention in the article, and possibly another reason to upgrade to the Xserves, is the use of the Server Manager software. This software doesn't work on the PowerMac G5's because it doesn't have the sensors built in that the Xserves do. Not being that keen on cluster arrangements, I wonder if they have another product in place now that does the same thing with the PowerMacs?

Re:PowerPC 970FX

[GizmoToy]

It does. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the power output of the 970FX chip was in the neighborhood of 15Watts, about 1/4 more than the current G4 'books. The watt number may be wrong, but the are definately only slightly more power-hungry than the current chips.

G5 PowerBooks are on the way!

Re:Very good homes...

[krewemaynard]

"The pricing of the upgrade is still being determined..."

<drool>man, when i saw this, i couldnt help but be jealous of that kind of budget. my first thought was, "must be nice..."</drool>

<shameless_plea> considering our (small, private, broke) school is using REALLY old hardware, i could definitely find a home for them. we are still trying to make use of old P1's with 32 MB RAM (hell, i got one that we installed Win2K on! it's kind of a joke to even turn the thing on), and a lot of our hardware keeps dying. plus, i would love nothing more than to get MS off ALL of our boxen and move towards Mac/Linux. </shameless_plea>

--krewe

Re:a nice incentive

[jacksonyee]

I'm here at my last semester at Tech, and believe me, some of my CS friends would be happy just to get an A in a class, much less a G5!

Not a bad idea for the students, but if the university really gave every student that received a passing grade a machine valued at over a thousand dollars, you're going to hear other students complaining about it at the Collegiate Times, and there will be much more emphasis to take classes taught by the easier grading professors.

Don't get me started on the curator system either. I only had one semester dealing with it before I switched out of CpE, but I really long for the days of classroom teaching. Programming is best learned in front of a computer with someone guiding you along, not uploading files to a server and getting large amounts of response texts back.

Top 2? Top 1?

[sootman]

For those who keep wondering aloud if they'll be able to improve their ranking, due to ECC, 2.3 GHz G5s, etc...

#3: VA Tech: 10.28 TFlops
#2: Los Alamos: 13.88 TFlops
#1: EarthL 35.86 TFlops

So, even if they spent 3x as much and filled up the now 2/3 empty room *and* scaled linearly (which they won't, won't, and definitely won't), they *still* wouldn't reach #1. #2, however, might be within reach, if they go to 2.3GHz and the ECC is a huge help.

Now that they more or less know where they'll wind up and there's no point in being secretive, I'd love to see them show what one box does on its own, then 2, then 5, then 10, then 50, then 100, then 200, 500, and finally 1100.

Re:Speed Improvments

[NatasRevol]

Damn, I guess you know something that no one else (publicly) currently does. Xserves are only at 2.0 GHz, as of 11:30 AM EST 1/27/04.

Of course, that could change in the next hour...

Re:Has anyone else heard.....

[valdis]

First off, it's in a machine room, which is expected to be noisy anyhow.

Second off, I've been between rows 3 and 4 (i.e. dead center) when it's going at full blast, and I can assure you that the Xserve/G5 fans are totally drowned out by the overhead Leibert cooling fans.

Re:A friend of mine had a great idea about this

[novellengineer]

Okay, I'm the friend that suggested this. I'm trying to figure out how the post rated a funny. It's a serious suggestion. Those PowerMacs were a part of history, and should be memorialized somehow. Laser engraving a few words, putting Dr. Varadarajan's signature and numbering each of the cases would be a nice touch. If VT then put them on eBay they could recoup some of their cost and actually make something off of them, cause we all know they didn't pay retail.

It's obvious TV already has plans for them put I do feel the cases should be somehow marked to acknowledge the role those Power Macs played in history.

2+2 = ??

[Collin]

This was recently on macosrumors.com

"G5 Updates: An interesting submission by "Pinkus" is similar to several others we've received in recent days. I am currently awaiting the announcement this weekend of the next line of g5s: My wait began two weeks ago when I was contemplating the purchase of a refurbished Dual 2.0 G5 when my brother then informed me of the possibility of the new G5s (single 2.0s, dual 2.4s and 2.6s). I asked the guys in CA at the Apple on-line store to inform me when some refurbished G5s were available. Of course two weeks ago the Apple guys told me not to wait that "it is rare when the G5s pop-up as refurbished." Then yesterday, I received a rather rushed and forceful voicemail message from Evan @ Apple informing me that "many refurbished G5s are now available, and we should really get this order through ASAP!" I understand that Apple's refurbished products can be anything from a rebuilt product to a simple open-box item. I just find it odd that days before the possible announcement of the next generation line of G5s (single 2.0 G5s, Dual 2.4 G5s and Dual 2.6 G5s) that "many refurbished Dual 2.0 G5s" would pop up. Needless to say I am waiting till after the weekend to act.

Add this VT annoucement with the above rumor and perhaps we see where those good homes will be coming from?