On May 1, 2010, at 20:33 , John Francis wrote:
Basically, a system of a mere 300 Mac Pros has never been
anywhere pushing the top of the performance charts in the
real world; any such claims must have come with so many
restrictions and qualifiers as to be meaningless.
In 2004 IBM retook the "fastest computer" crown with the
first "Blue Gene" system, at a paltry 36 teraflops. (The
current incarnation of that architecture has achieved
very close to a petaflop). But even 36 teraflops is a
bit more than you could get from only 300 Mac Pros.
Perhaps you are thinking of this 2008 article:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/The_Fastest_Mac_Compared_to_Todays_Supercomputers/
This compares a single Mac Pro to the LANL Roadrunner system
(a top-of-the-line 2008 system). It does point out that the
cost per gigaflop of a Mac Pro is significantly lower than
that of the Roadrunner system. It also compares the Mac Pro
with a 1976 Cray 1. no surprise - the Mac Pro is faster (by
about a factor of 1000).
More likely, though, is the 2003 Virginia tech system. That
managed an impressive 12 teraflops - good enough to be the
3rd fastest system known in 2003. But that used a little
more than 300 Power mac G5s - in fact about four times that.
Later revisions increased performance by about 25% (and also
fixed some of the other, rather more serious, problems),
which was good enough to keep the system in the top 10 for
the next year, and in the top 20 for another year.
Yeah. I was just winging it from my old failing memory. The Virginia
Tech system sounds like what I was remembering. I read about it. I did
not design it or test it. I was just impressed by it's capacity /
throughput. I defer to your remembrance of the event!
Bed time…
Joseph McAllister
[email protected]
I couldn't remember most of what I know today
if it weren't for others sharing their knowledge
of my past on the Internet. Thank you…
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