Big Mac

Of the three fastest supercomputers in the world, Japan's NEC-built Earth Simulator leads the pack, computing 35.8 teraflops (35.8 trillion floating point operations per second). The second fastest is Hewlett-Packard's ASCI Q, clocking in at 13.8 teraflops. The third fastest supercomputer in the world, at 9.55 teraflops, was built by—would you believe—Apple?

It's true. The Big Mac (as it's coming to be called) is actually a cluster of 1,100 off-the-shelf Apple Macintosh G5 desktop computers, configured by Virginia Tech's Srinidhi Varadarajan and an army of student volunteers. The supercomputer is turning heads in the high-performance computing world because it was built for just over $5 million US dollars, in only six months. Top-ranking supercomputers typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to construct.

Varadarajan first considered using other processors, but found Intel's Itanium 2 too slow, and AMD's Opteron too expensive. The 1,100 dual-processor Apple G5s are connected through 24 high-speed Infiniband switches from Mellanox Technologies, and use a cooling system from Leibert, a division of Emerson Network Power, as well as Gigabit Ethernet switches from Cisco Systems. Virginia Tech will use the cluster to perform research on nanoscale electronics, chemistry, aerodynamics, molecular statics, computational acoustics and molecular modelling, among other tasks.

Update

Apple has just posted detailed information regarding this project on their website. Read about it here.

Update – January 27, 2004

Apple Computer, Inc. is once again teaming with Virginia Tech, this time to build a new supercomputer by clustering its new 64-bit Xserve G5 server. The Xserve, a much more compact machine built for rack-mounted stacking, will reduce the size of the current Apple/VT supercomputer by two thirds. The new machine will operate more efficiently, produce less heat, and ultimately work even faster than its predecessor (the third fastest, and most cost-effective supercomputer in the world). Using this technology, Virginia Tech has plans to follow with 50 and 100 teraflop machines in due course. Find out more here.