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G5 Supercomputer to be 'Pantherized'

updated 07:40 am EST, Thu October 30, 2003

, noting that the "latest numbers are 9.555 tera and we still have more tricks left. We are hoping for another 10 percent boost to become the first academic machine to cross 10 tera. The last ratings put us at number three worldwide." The systems will be upgraded from Mac OS X 10.2.7 to Panther in the next few, which may also provide an additional speed boost: "This will require an install and a recompile of some of the code. Custom code included InfiniBand drivers and some parallel communication libraries known as MV APICH [ported from Linux]. The PCI-X timing was changed to increase InfiniBand performance to 870MBps. Also, message caching and dynamic memory management were added for improved scientific application performance."

by MacNN Staff

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10/30, 08:27am | report spam | close Reply |
update next few?

hours? days? weeks? months? years? decades?

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10/30, 08:47am | report spam | close Reply |
duh

Of course they are going to upgrade to panther. It's well known by now that panther provides a speed benifit, so it makes perfect sense. This is not news.

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10/30, 08:55am | report spam | close Reply |
Just ordered mine

I just ordered my 1200 G5's - super cluster. I write a lot of letters to grandma, so, I really need to harness the speed of these machines.

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10/30, 09:20am | report spam | close Reply |
speed

can your grandma read that fast?

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10/30, 09:24am | report spam | close Reply |
Panther

$19.95 *1200. Apple Up-to-date will make a boatload of cash here...

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10/30, 09:40am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Panther

They will not be getting Panther through Up-To-Date and paying $20 for each copy. Christ.

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10/30, 10:29am | report spam | close Reply |
Site License

Apple does offer a site license of Panther. All you have to do is call them. It is not available through the Apple Store online.

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10/30, 10:49am | report spam | close Reply |
no need

No need for a site licence, Panther is free with every G5. They can find a CD laying around somewhere and dupe it, I'm sure.

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10/30, 11:17am | report spam | close Reply |
Super Pod Cluster

I just created a super cluster of 1200 iPods.
I can keep 4.3 milions songs. But the biggest boost is that I can scroll through a whole library in 0.34 milliseconds. And listen at 32768 beats per minute!!!

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10/30, 11:25am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: no need

Yes, but each FREE copy of Panther is $19.95 for shipping and handling, and each copy is ONE license to use Panther on ONE machine. That's 1,100 * $19.95.

Although I'm sure Apple will give them a discount, as I doubt seriously they paid full price for each machine out of that 1,100.

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10/30, 12:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Will get much better

I'm note sure what compilers they are using, but the new IBM compilers (particularly xlf) really exploit the G5 well. These compilers are still in beta phase. But even so, on my own 'scientific' code I see 30-50% over gcc.

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10/30, 12:24pm | report spam | close Reply |
Apple got no discount

A Wired story says VT got NO discount for those G5s.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61005,00.html

"Varadarajan said Apple provided significant technical help and gave Virginia Tech some of the first G5s off the production line, but the college paid full price for the machines, which cost $3,000 apiece."

I betcha you can get "Extremely F****** Fast User Switching" on that cluster!

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10/30, 12:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
Apple got no discount

A Wired story says VT got NO discount for those G5s.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61005,00.html

"Varadarajan said Apple provided significant technical help and gave Virginia Tech some of the first G5s off the production line, but the college paid full price for the machines, which cost $3,000 apiece."

I betcha you can get "Extremely F****** Fast User Switching" on that cluster!

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10/30, 12:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: discount

Seems hard to believe they wouldn't get them at the academic discount. The reporting may have screwed up the idea of "no special discount" (but still the "normal" academic pricing) with the retail pricing. How could anyone ordering 1100 systems from a vendor be so foolish as to not negotiate a discount...?

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10/30, 01:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
One way for no "discount

...is that the systems are such a great cost/performance deal that even without a discount they were a much better deal than the competition.

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10/30, 01:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
"no discount" possibili

another possibility is that while they may have paid full price for the machines, apple comped them on the typical 3-year extra warranty on parts and labor across the board, etc. lots of vendors make their money on the hardware, and then just comp the service, especially i they know it's not likely to be used enough to be costly.

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10/30, 02:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: duh

Who the h*** are you people who take it upon yourselves to critique what macnn reports? I mean, seriously, what do you do all day? Just sit around and b**** about every little way the world would be different if you were running it?

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10/30, 02:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: duh

I've noticed that the people who tend to post with such rigid authority on fora like these tend to look and live like "The Comic Book Guy" on the Simpsons.

I'd wager that a good many of them have no more authority in RL than the lead fry cook at McDonald's.

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10/30, 02:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
discount

$3000 a piece is a huge discount on a dual with 4GB of RAM. The must be at or below cost!

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10/30, 03:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
They did pay full price.

Check out the wired article entitled "Mac Supercomputer Just Got Faster".

Quote: "Varadarajan said Apple provided significant technical help and gave Virginia Tech some of the first G5s off the production line, but the college paid full price for the machines, which cost $3,000 apiece."

That sales rep must of been happy.

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10/30, 03:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
"World's Largest Switch

This article is misnamed. VT isn't the World's largest switcher". Optus' switch more than quadruple the size.

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10/30, 03:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
Worst Comment thread ever

Nowehere does it say anything about how they are upgrading to Panther.

I would hazzard to guess it is a "free upgrade" since VT is probably gonna move into the number two spot because of it. I'll laugh if Panther causes a couple hundred machines or more to crash.

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10/30, 03:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Re: no need

"Yes, but each FREE copy of Panther is $19.95 for shipping and handling, and each copy is ONE license to use Panther on ONE machine. That's 1,100 * $19.95."

Think ouside the box will you? Why would Apple send them 1100 copies? They will most likely send them one shipment with 5-10 copies. They only need 1, and the rest would be used as backup copies.

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10/30, 04:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
Shouldn't they wait?

Panther 10.3 still has significant software bugs. Given the mission critical nature of a supercomputer farm. Shouldn't they wait at least 10.3.1 before they move over? Or maybe all the GUI troubles, FW ext disk problems won't affect the operation of their cluster.

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10/30, 06:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Shouldn't they wait

They said they'd be moving over in the next couple weeks. For all we know, 10.3.1 wil be out in a couple of weeks.
Personally, I'm hoping 10.3.1 will be out sooner than that. The number and the severity of the bugs in Panther is absolutely staggering!!!!!
I've NEVER had so much go wrong in such a short amount of time on a Mac.

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10/30, 11:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Really?

I've been running Panther since late September (b74 - upgraded to b85 in early October - I am a developer with legitimate access to Panther seeds). I've had few problems with it - much fewer than with 10.1, or with Jaguar...

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10/31, 12:32am | report spam | close Reply |
Up to date 1 $20

If you have multiple qualifying computers for the up to date program, apple says you only need to buy one copy and ask for a multiple computer license (which I assume is free since the $20 was to cover shipping+handling according to apple)

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10/31, 04:47am | report spam | close Reply |
I just

I just ordered 1,100 Dual G5's from Apple and one Mac Plus off ebay. Time to move down to #4 VT!!!, My super computer is going to be 8 MHz faster than yours!!! See ya LOSERS!!!!

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10/31, 08:19am | report spam | close Reply |
family pack

VT should order a 1100/5 = 220 family packs :)

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G5 Supercomputer to be 'Pantherized'

updated 07:40 am EST, Thu October 30, 2003

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update next few?

duh

Just ordered mine

speed

Panther

Re: Panther

Site License

no need

Super Pod Cluster

Re: no need

Will get much better

Apple got no discount

Apple got no discount

re: discount

One way for no "discount

"no discount" possibili

re: duh

re: duh

discount

They did pay full price.

"World's Largest Switch

Worst Comment thread ever

Re: Re: no need

Shouldn't they wait?

Re: Shouldn't they wait

Really?

Up to date 1 $20

I just

family pack

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