“When Virginia Tech created the world’s third-fastest supercomputer last year by stringing together 1,100 Apple Computer Inc. Macintoshes, no one seemed more stunned than Apple itself. Sure, the firm had long touted the newest G5 models as fast. But that referred to their speedy film editing and CD burning, not the massive number crunching needed to sequence genomes or model weather patterns,” Ken Spencer Brown writes for Investor’s Business Daily. “‘It shocked a lot of people,’ said Virginia Tech spokeswoman Lynn Nystrom.”
“Apple may have more surprises on the way. The company best known for the slick iPod and cutesy iMac is betting that Virginia Tech’s coup opens doors to new, more button-down markets,” Brown writes. “The supercomputer market itself is tiny. Virginia Tech’s system costs $5.2 million