Virginia Tech on Your Mac Life 40
YourMacLife writes "On tonight's Your Mac Life, the Dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineers, Hassan Aref, will talk about the G5 cluster the college is building and what it means to supercomputing. Questions can be sent in advance to onair@yourmaclife.com." See the web site for more details.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:4, Informative)
Unlimited Client X server costs only 1000. [apple.com]
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Re: Here's the clue ;-) (Score:2)
The 10 user license only restricts the number of people that can simultaneously connect via AFP, there are no restrictions on the number of users created or the number of users simultaneously connecting via SAMBA, FTP or NFS.
Re: Here's the clue ;-) (Score:2)
Re: Here's the clue ;-) (Score:1)
Once again, just curious?
Re: Here's the clue ;-) (Score:1)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on the likely purposes of this cluster, that's completely meaningless. This is what 64-bit hardware is for.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
Each Mac comes with a license for OS X. Besides, I'm sure for such a high profile customer, Apple would work out a nice deal for any future upgrades. Even if they didn't, it would only cost ~$75k to buy a new license of OS X for each machine at EDU prices.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
But, it was more of a general comment about the move by Apple to go to a BSD-based OS (compared to OS 9, for instance) that would have made it a viable platform for these advanced uses.
In retrospect, that point/question wasn't framed as well as I had hoped.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pundits say the machine is actually cheap [businessweek.com]. For a 64-bit machine with all the I/O and bus trimmings it is priced nicely. The only thing I'm amazed at is that VT didn't wait for headless cluster-only Xserves. Rack mounting the G5 case looks like it would be a hassle and a shame.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
So although a cluster of X-Serves would make more sense they can't really wait.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
I believe they were in a rush to beat the cutoff date for the Linpack Top 500 Supercomputer List [top500.org]
Apple gave them the performance and, I'm sure, the sweet deal they needed to make it happen.
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it's called MacOS X. (early version of Panther)
I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)
What? They are buying 1100 machines, they get 1100 copies of MacOS X. What kind of licensing issue are you dreaming of?
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:2)
There is also no such thing as a "full version" of Mac OS like Windows. All boxed copies are upgrades to whatever you got when you bought it. Mac users tend to forget that when they complain about upgrade prices - why isn't there an ungrade price
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Huh? Are you implying that they would have to pay more for a Apple with an OS than one without? What cave have you been living in for the past 20 years?
methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.
Maybe you should tell them, because a school with an entire group of people looking at this problem full-time obviously would never have though of c
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Re:Did BSD make this possible? (Score:1)
Re:Why the short time frame? (Score:2)
Can I Play Doom III On It? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:$5m??! (Score:2)
Re:$5m??! (Score:2, Informative)
I think VT are getting a pretty good deal. Really large clusters/supercomputers *can* cost upwards of $30M, depending on the configuration.
Notes From the Interview (Score:2, Informative)
It wasn't that great, so you didn't miss much. It starts at 1:17 and ends at about 1:37 in the archive file for those who would like to listen. For everyone else, here is a list of the highlights:
Re:Notes From the Interview (Score:1)
DOA machines (Score:2)
I can tell you one way it's affecting my mac life (Score:1)
I don't know what kind of subliminal messages Steve puts in his keynotes, but my wallet opens itself around apple logos these days. Scary.