Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Cost-Conscious Supercomputing
Blacksburg, VA — Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan knew that he wanted to build a world-class supercomputer. Also, he wanted to solidify the position of Virginia Tech’s world-class computer science program. But with only a fraction of most supercomputing budgets to spend, it seemed like a hopeless dream. He crunched numbers, solicited every likely vendor, examined and ultimately discarded all possible options using other platforms and chips. Then in June of 2003, news of Apple’s Power Mac G5 hit the airwaves. At last, Varadarajan realized, he’d have as much 64-bit processing as he needed to power his dream, without overtaxing his budget.
Soon after the announcement, Varadarajan took delivery of his very first PowerBook laptop running Mac OS X. Within days, he placed an order for the 1100 dual processor, 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 computers that now drive Virginia Tech’s new supercomputer. Smart choice: In November of 2003 the giant system — named System X — became the third fastest supercomputer in the world.
System X is radically different from traditional, high-performance supercomputers. Unlike most, it is based on a “supercluster” of Power Mac G5 computers, each of which has 4GB of main memory, and 160GB of serial ATA storage. Not only is System X the world’s fastest, most powerful “home-built” supercomputer, it quite possibly has the cheapest price/performance of any supercomputer on the TOP500 list.
