More on Virginia Tech G5 Cluster: 17.6 Tflops

daveschroeder writes "BBC World's Click Online has a video report (with text transcript) on Virginia Tech's new 1100-node dual 2.0 GHz G5 Terascale Cluster. The report quotes the performance as 17.6 Tflops. As a point of reference, the cluster would be number 2 on the most recent June Top 500 list, behind only Japan's Earth Simulator, and considerably more than doubling the performance of the current number 3 1152-node dual 2.4 GHz Xeon MCR Linux cluster. Assuming the performance figure accurately reflects the LINPACK score (which it should; since the deadline for submissions for the upcoming list of Oct 1 has already passed, one would imagine VT would quote that figure), and depending on new entries for November's upcoming list, the cluster should almost certainly rank in the top 5 - all for only US$5.2 million. The video report is available in Windows Media 9 and Real formats; the relevant portion starts at 13:00."

Heist

[DarkHazard]

Surley they only need 1099 G5s.

Yes, but,

[Anonymous Coward]

can it defeat an iMac in Apple's Photoshop benchmarks ;-)?

Re:Heist

[Anonymous Coward]

for(i=1096; i=0; i--){
reply(i)
}

How fast can it copy a 17mb file?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the true test.

Cluster problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't wan't to start a holy war here, but what is up with you G5 cluster zealots? Ive been sitting at my freelance gig of a G5 cluster (1200 Dual G5s) for twenty minutes as it attempts to copy a 17 megabyte file from one folder to another! Twenty minutes! At home my Beowulf cluster of 100 Celerons running Linux, the same operation takes just 2 minutes, if that. While this is happening, Itunes won't work, and everything else grinds to a halt. Even vim is struggling to catch up as I type this.

Yes, I do have DMA enabled, and I am using 25K SCSI disks. My old 3.2 Ghz 64 way xeon runs faster than this G5 cluster at times. G5 zealots, flame me if you like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why I should use G5s over faster, cheaper clusters.

Re:Heist

[AKAImBatman]

> for(i=1096; i=0; i--){
> reply(i)
> }

Congrats. You've managed to snag yourself exactly ZERO machines. Try this instead:

for(i=1096; i >= 0; i--){
reply(i)
}

Re:Twice as fast...?

[TheRaven64]

I'd still take the G4 over the P4...

I'm not so sure. It's almost winter, and this house can get pretty cold...