Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Thursday, September 25, 2003

[Item Permalink]  -- Comment()
G5 Supercomputer Goes Online: "The Virginia Tech supercomputing cluster, which consists of 1,100 Apple G5 machines housing 4.4 TB of memory, goes online Sept. 24, meeting its target of starting operations by Oct. 1. Terascale Computing Facility director Srinidhi Varadarajan, who believes the cluster will be ranked "very highly" among the world's leading supercomputers, notes that the machine will cost only $5.2 million, in contrast to the $80 million to $100 million typical of similarly-sized projects. [...] Varadarajan also devised the cluster's "Deja vu" software package, which is designed to maintain computer stability by transferring a failed application to another location without alerting the computer, thus keeping the application intact. Lynn Nystrom of the College of Engineering says the project's cost will be distributed over five years; the supercomputer is expected to generate millions of dollars in research funding so that other research centers can be established."