Virginia Tech on Your Mac Life

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 [e-mail]." See the web site for more details.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[coolmacdude]

Reports I've read say they will be running a special version of Darwin designed for high performance clusters.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[n8_f]

Nope, the Dean of the Engineering school says they are using Mac OS X for now. They might look at something else in the future, but for now it is 10.2.7 (the only OS that fully supports Apple's G5).

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[Juanvaldes]

Does this mean they're planning on running some variant of BSD? I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)... would cost "too much" and would provide "more" than they need.
Unlimited Client X server costs only 1000. [apple.com]

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[AllMightyPaul]

Wrong. That means that you can have an unlimited number of people connect to your server. It does not mean that you can run an unlimited number of copies.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[dhwebb]

What does the 10-user licenses cover? I thought if I was using it as a Windows SMB server, that since it was using Samba, it would be already unlimited users because of the GPL license. Does the 10-user count only limit AFP connections or SSH clients or what. Just curious what the user licenses are needed for?

Re: Here's the clue ;-)

[bursch-X]

Wrong. That means you can have an unlimited number of people connecting via AFP.

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 ;-)

[AllMightyPaul]

Eh, I didn't indicate a protocol, but that doesn't make my original point any less valid and that was that you can only install it once even with the unlimited client access license.

Re: Here's the clue ;-)

[dhwebb]

OK. You answered my previous question about wht the licenses were for. Now another question, why would you buy AFP licenses if obviously the Macs can talk over SMB or NFS for free? What is the AFP advantage that makes it worth paying for? I'm sure Samba is more difficult to configure that AFP but if your running a server, you should have the ability to handle the few extra steps.

Once again, just curious?

Re: Here's the clue ;-)

[justforaday]

if you set up the machines to use remote home directories from an os x server it will use AFP by default. also, i believe in earlier versions of os x, the server browser only showed AFP servers. i could be wrong on that last point tho. either way, they've certainly made the os play a lot nicer with various connection methods over the years.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Bravo for the effort... but, methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.

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?

[MalleusEBHC]

Does this mean they're planning on running some variant of BSD? I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)... would cost "too much" and would provide "more" than they need.

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?

[Danma]

Where were you when this [slashdot.org] was posted? Clearly Virginia Tech's already done the pricing homework versus commodity PC hardware. Meanwhile, I'm sure Apple will give them a nice deal for buying so many machines (plus free advertising for the ol' fruit company, eh?)

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[Not_Wiggins]

Point. 8)

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?

[djward]

Actually, they paid regular .edu institution prices for all machines. They were ordered through the Apple store online. Apple did give them a break on RAM - Crucial RAM at wholesale (NOT Apple) prices, preinstalled before the machines shipped.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[Daleks]

Bravo for the effort... but, methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.

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?

[Senjaz]

Time is a big factor here, as the article says they've got to finish it by the 1st October for them to enter the super computer rankings for this year.

So although a cluster of X-Serves would make more sense they can't really wait.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[The Bod]

They probably didn't consider this, but resale could be a factor as well. When they upgrade their Super Computer to a G6 in a few years, I would guess that they would have an easier time reselling a bunch of PowerMacs than a bunch of Xserves. How cool would it be to say you have a piece of a Super Computer?

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[switcha]

...I'm amazed at is that VT didn't wait for headless cluster-only Xserves.

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?

[The Bod]

Does this mean they're planning on running some variant of BSD?

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?

[Senjaz]

Yeah, PC users generally have a hard time understanding that the computer hardware & software are sold as one product by Apple. You're buying a computer that works. No product activation to worry about, no buck passing and finger pointing when you need support.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)... would cost "too much"

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?

[ruprechtjones]

Um, every Mac purchased comes with a copy of OS X. That's 1100 licenses right there. Not sure if each one needs to be the server OS, but I seriously doubt it in a node set-up.

Re:Did BSD make this possible?

[RobertEdwards]

The deadlines for this project procurement are probably related to Federal grant funding cycles. The US Government fiscal year kicks over in October.

Re:Why the short time frame?

[digital_freedom]

They are trying to make the deadline for the Top 500 list of supercomputers here [http]. The conference is in early November and they need to be able to run the LinPack benchmarks on the system in order to get a spot. They will hopefully make it into the Top 5.

Can I Play Doom III On It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, can I?

Re:$5m??!

[Clock Nova]

According to the many articles I've read concerning this, they compared price and performance with a lot of different companies and machines. So, no. They wouldn't have gotten it cheaper with Linux and Intel.

Re:$5m??!

[adam872]

Compared to the ASCI series put together by the US government, $5M is not a lot of money. Consider that a single Sun SF15k, IBM p or z series or HP SuperDome can cost easily this much (that's just one machine).

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

[n8_f]

Well, I browsed through the links at threshold=1 and I couldn't find any comments from anyone who had actually listened to the broadcast in question. No surprise there, I guess.

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:

They didn't go with an Xserve chassis because they couldn't get one with a G5.

They are using the stock chassis, no modifications.

Re:Notes From the Interview

[n8_f]

I cut out the relevant question and put it up here [mac.com], so you can judge for yourself, but I think the context and quote are pretty clear. In referring to the VT datacenter, he says: "They've configured one corner of that - umm - I think there are about 6 to 8 racks or maybe more with all of these machines standing on them." He may be somewhat removed from the minute details of the project, but if he was off by over a full magnitude of order, why would he throw out any number? And he is definitely saying "6

DOA machines

[djward]

I just heard through one of the people involved that 900 machines have arrived now. Out of those, only 2 were DOA. That's less than 0.25%. Impressive. And only 200 more to go.

I can tell you one way it's affecting my mac life

[fuzzeli]

having to wait another month to get my hands on my preordered dualie! I was so upset, I bought an iMac for my wife, and now I feel much better.

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.