Who knew that supercomputers make New Year's Resolutions? Not us, we can tell you that much. We always figured that resolutions were strictly the domain of shiftless layabouts like ourselves, who delight in the sheer absurdity inherent in an empty promise of self-improvement that will almost certainly wind up broken even before Dick Clark's New Year's Eve stops Rockin'. "We resolve to broadcast AtAT episodes in a timely fashion." "We resolve to stop making cracks about Steve Ballmer's mutant sweat glands and apelike tendencies." "We resolve to compile Beat The Analysts stats within a week of the end of the contest and update Viewer Mail at least once a decade." Oh, the laughs we shared...

But, apparently, resolve they do-- supercomputers, that is. Faithful viewer bo notes that rumor has become reported fact: Virginia Tech will indeed replace the Power Mac G5s in its "Big Mac" cluster (they're officially calling it "X" these days, but we figure if we have to swipe a trademark, we'd rather steal one from McDonald's than from Billy Zoom and that Exene chick) with Xserves now that said 1U rack-friendly systems are all G5-ified and groovy. Why the switch? A Reuters report quotes supercluster superstar Srinidhi Varadarajan as noting that converting 1,100 Power Macs into Xserves "cuts the system's size down by a factor of three. The new system will take much less power and generate less heat and free up space." So, yeah; apparently "Big Mac"'s New Year's Resolution was to shed a few inches.

Or a few hundred thousand. "Big Mac" in its current Power Mac-based incarnation takes up a whopping 3,000 square feet (and when it sits around the house, it really sits around the house); after the Xserve swap-out it'll only use a third that. No, it still won't be able to squeeze into a size 5 dress, but we're still talking about a mucho impressive 67% size reduction, which is more than Jenny Craig can promise. And in addition to clearing some room for air hockey tables-- nerds need fun, too, you know-- Xserves ought to save the university some cash on kilowatt-hours in the long run, since it costs a lot less to cool a thousand square feet than to cool three thousand.

The upgrade will be complete by May, and reportedly a price hasn't been hashed out yet, so the rumor that Apple would let the university do an even-trade swap didn't pan out. (We didn't think that sounded like Apple.) Likewise, therefore Apple isn't taking the Power Macs back, and their fate is currently undetermined. "We're working on getting them very good homes," says Srinidhi. Say, does anyone have Srinidhi's home phone number? Because we'd be willing to take three or four of 'em off his hands...