As the Apple Turns: Scene 4980: Yes, Twelve Captures Fifth (10/14/04)

Yes, Twelve Captures Fifth (10/14/04)

Hey, so how come no one's talking about Virginia Tech's newly-upgraded Mac-based supercomputer? We know that stabilization and benchmarking are still officially "in progress," but ongoing benchmarks have been available in the infamous and constantly-updated Dongarra Report for a while, now. And since the cluster was completely gutted to have every single one of its dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5s replaced with custom-order dual 2.3 GHz Xserves (by exceptionally well-attired volunteers, we might add), surely every man, woman, and child alive must be quivering in anticipation to see just how much faster System X is following its overhaul.

Well, good news: if you flip to page 54, you'll see that "Apple XServe platform (1080 dual 2.3 GHz IBM PowerPC 970 w/Mellanox Infiniband" currently scores 12.05 teraflops, a respectable 17 percent gain over the 10.28 teraflops scored by the cluster's original Power Mac-based incarnation. (That's especially nice considering that the clock speed increase is only 15 percent.) There's probably still time for that number to creep a bit higher before the official scores are published by the TOP500 list, but generally speaking, you're probably safe thinking of System X as a 12-teraflop cluster now.

"But what's this? System X's score is sixth! Now it won't get to bask in glory on the TOP500 home page as one of the world's five fastest supercomputers!" Calm down, Beavis; take a closer look at the third and fourth entries and you'll realize that they're the same exact cluster, before and after its owners added another 64 processors to it. In much the same way, System X is also listed in the seventh, ninth, and eleventh slots, with scores taken at various points along its journey to life as a complete 1,100-Xserve system. Factor out the doubles and, barring an "October Surprise," System X ought to sit in fifth place, under an Alpha cluster, a new Itanium2 system, the once-mighty Earth Simulator, and the new top dog, that chunk of IBM's unfinished BlueGene. Woo-hoo, PowerPCs in two of the top five! No other chip can say that.

In fact, none of chips can really say anything at all, but still.

So there you have it, folks; one Xserve upgrade later, System X breaks 12 teraflops and ought to capture fifth place. Considering that without the upgrade the cluster would have dropped to an ignominious eighth-place slot, we figure it was money, time, and frustration well spent. By the way, if you're looking at TOP500's October 1st deadline for submissions, ignore it-- that's apparently just the deadline by which you need to have your supercomputer up and running, because that was the deadline last year, too, and Virginia Tech continously improved its cluster's score throughout the entire month of October, bringing it from its initial anemic 7.41 teraflops all the way up to its official ranked benchmark of 10.28 teraflops. So don't worry, Macs shall represent. Yo.

SceneLink (4980)

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The above scene was taken from the 10/14/04 episode:

October 14, 2004: Apple's stock skyrockets by 13 percent; could Steve Jobs's personal appearance at the mini-store unveiling be a factor? Meanwhile, the iTunes Music Store sells its 150 millionth song, and Virginia Tech's newly-upgraded "System X" Mac cluster boosts its score from 10.28 teraflops to a hair over 12 (so far)...

Other scenes from that episode:

4978: Sales, Stores, or Steve? (10/14/04) Please pardon any typos that may creep in today, but it's a little hard for us to see now that we seem to have picked up some sort of rare eye affliction; we took one look at Apple's stock price and our eyes immediately swelled to five times their usual size and our pupils turned into dollar signs...
4979: Still Hurtling Ever Forward (10/14/04) Man, talk about bending over backwards for an analyst; during the earnings conference call on Wednesday evening, Kevin Hunt of Thomas Weisel Partners (that's "WISE-el," not "weasel", we promise) kicked off the Q&A session by asking how many songs the iTunes Music Store had sold to date, and Peter "Really, I Mean It, Stop Calling Me Fred" Oppenheimer only answered that "we'll from time to time release music sales as we cross major milestones."...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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