At 9:22 AM -0600 11/18/03, Doug Hamilton wrote:

Hello Everyone:

I just received a link to a new Apple web page which is a resource for any of the researchers on this list who may be interested in building a computer cluster. For those of you who know what a computer cluster is, you don't have to be building a cluster on the scale of Virginia Tech (http://computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/); just five or ten systems is a good start.

One item not mentioned in the Virgina Tech page is that the cost for this #3 ranked supercomputer was <$600/teraflop. This info is on the Mellanox page. Mellanox technology supplied the interconnectivity via InfiniBand switching: http://www.mellanox.com/viginianews.html

Mellanox's take (supplied InfiniBand connectivity): Virginia Tech has deployed a 1105-node InfiniBand computing cluster. This InfiniBand cluster is reporting 10.28 TeraFlops which represents a ranking of #3 on the current Top500 list. Leveraging the industry standard InfiniBand network and high performance Apple G5 computers, Virginia Tech was able to build the system in less than four months investing only $5.2 million. * Ranks as #3 computer on the Planet (vs current list) * 10+ TeraFlops * Only $5.2M to deploy or <$600 per TeraFlop * Less than 4 months to Deploy (Award to 10+ TeraFlop result) * Twenty-four InfiniBand 96-Port switches * MPI Software features Ohio State University http://www.mellanox.com/viginianews.html