Virginia Tech ‘Big Mac’ supercomputer attracting potential customers
Wednesday, January 28, 2004 - 09:49 AM EST"Virginia Tech's decision to replace its 'Big Mac' supercomputer processors with Apple Computer Xserve G5 servers will make the installation more attractive to the federal agencies and organizations negotiating with the university for its novel supercomputer technology," W. David Gardner reports for TechWeb News.
"A Virginia Tech spokesperson said the university and Apple Computer have received 'a number of inquiries' from federal agencies to use the university's installation or its supercomputer-kit technology to build their own supercomputer installations. The key proprietary piece of the installation--recently ranked the third most powerful supercomputer in the world--is its fault-tolerant software environment called Déjà Vu," Gardner reports.
"The software and the supercomputer design are the brainchild of Srinidhi Varadarajan, assistant professor of computer science. When he first went to Apple with his plan to link 1100 G5s, the company was so incredulous that Virginia Tech had to send a team to Apple headquarters, in Cupertino, to convince company executives that the plan was serious," Gardner reports. "The installation has been up and running for a few months, but the swapping of G5s for Xserve servers will shrink the size of the installation. 'We'll cut the space used by a factor of three,' said Lynn Nystrom, university spokesperson. 'We'll go from 3,000 square feet to 1,000 square feet.'"
"As for potential customers, Nystrom said federal agencies, including the Argonne National Lab, the National Security Agency, and NASA, are among those expressing interest in the supercomputer technology. She added that negotiations were underway with potential customers who could use the university's installation itself, or obtain rights to build their own supercomputer based on the university's technology," Gardner reports.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Forrester Analyst: Regardless of Virginia Tech 'Big Mac' supercomputer, IT pros will ignore Apple products - January 27, 2004
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The only downside is that some of these computers may never be ranked due to their classified uses. Apple may have several of the top ten supercomputers in the world and we will never know it.