US Army builds another G5-based supercomputer

COLSA today announced the purchase of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers from Apple to build a new supercomputer, which it expects to be one of the fastest in the world. The supercomputer, named MACH 5, is expected to deliver a peak performance capability of more than 25 TFlops/second at a cost of $5.8 million and will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the US Army. The Xserve G5 supercluster system is expected to be on-line and working for the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) division of the US Army Research and Development Command by late Fall.

"We expect MACH 5 to rank as one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet," said Dr Anthony DiRienzo, executive vice president at COLSA Corporation. "According to the November 2003 Top 500 supercomputer list, it would rank second only to Japan's $350 million Earth Simulator computer at less than two percent of the cost. We evaluated PC-based proposals from other vendors but none came close to delivering either the price, performance or manageability of the Apple Xserve G5."



This acquisition is the second phase of a multi-year COLSA program to create a center of excellence in Huntsville, AL for high performance computing. The new system will benefit both the U.S. Army and NASA for the National Aerospace Initiative and their research and development objectives.



"Apple is honored that COLSA chose the Xserve G5 to build their supercomputer cluster," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The ground breaking 64-bit performance and incredible I/O capabilities of the Xserve G5, combined with the reliability and scalability of our UNIX-based Mac OS X Server software deliver high performance computing solutions perfect for anyone looking to cluster from two to thousands of nodes, at an unbeatable price."



"Big Mac" was the original G5 supercomputer built from 1,100 G5 Power Macs by Virginia Tech (and subsequently upgraded to Xserves). It ranked No. 3 on the Top 500 supercomputer list; however, as noted earlier today, it dropped off the most recent rankings because it was taken offline for maintenance.

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