With the
compute performance of two superscalar 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors, the
Xserve G5 cluster node configuration is ideal for High Performance
Computing (HPC) in scientific and technical environments, as well as
for workgroup clusters and render farms. Your Xserve G5 cluster
delivers the high-density compute power you need — without the server
features you won’t use — for a price that’s easy to multiply across
your cluster.
 Measure for Measure
In fact, Xserve G5 offers the best performance for the price of any
64-bit IU system, including those with the latest Opteron processor.
Using the same LINPACK testing used to measure the world’s
supercomputers, Xserve G5 packs in a whopping performance of 9.0
Gigaflops in double-precision floating point math. By comparison, a
dual 2.0GHz Opteron peters out at 6 Gigaflops, and the Xserve G5 even
passes up a dual 3.2GHz Xeon.
 Crunching the
Numbers
And when you do the math on cost, Xserve G5 simply has no competition.
At $361 per gigaflop, Xserve G5 offers you the biggest bang for your
buck, so you can model everything from the expanding universe to the
human genome. Add even more systems for the same price you’d get from
IBM or Dell, and you’re on the way to supercomputing stardom.
Space Saver
Apple can offer you such a great price performance value by eliminating the cost of unneeded components. The cluster node configuration eliminates two hard drive bays and the optical drive, since you don’t need those for pure processing. Of course, you will want a standard Xserve for your “head node.” The unique Mac OS X NetBoot feature makes it easy to manage cluster nodes as if they were a single system. You can create a centralized disk image on the head node and deploy it across all the nodes in the compute cluster.
 UNIX power with Apple
ease of use
Mac OS X Server gives you a UNIX foundation for implementing open source and third-party clustering solutions as well as for using familiar UNIX utilities, shells, scripting languages and compilers to build specialized software for their work. Mac OS X Server provides you with a full suite of developer tools, including the gcc command-line compiler and Xcode, a powerful and easy to use development environment for creating Mac OS X applications, tools, frameworks, libraries, plug-ins, kernel extensions and device drivers in C, C++, Objective-C or Java. You can make a graphical interface for a command line application using Xcode and AppleScript in just a few hours. |
High Ranking Supercomputer
1100 Power Mac G5 systems power the Virgina Tech “X” cluster, the world’s fastest university supercomputer, the third overall and only the third system ever to exceed the 10 teraflops per second mark, at 10.28 teraflops per second. Now the G5 processor is available in a 1U system designed for high performance computing.
 Powerful
G5 Processors
The 64-bit G5 processor ushers in a new era in scientific computing. You get a superscalar, superpipelined execution core with two double-precision floating-point units, advanced branch prediction logic and a high-bandwidth frontside bus, as well as the vector processing Velocity Engine.
High Performance Computing
HPCwire, the journal of high performance computing, announced that Apple won 2003 Readers Choice Awards for most innovative HPC technology and price/performance honors for storage, hardware and cluster solutions.
Build Your Own Supercomputer
Xgrid, new software from Apple’s Advanced Computation Group, is one of many solutions for Mac OS X that make managing a supercomputer as easy as Macintosh.
TCP/IP over FireWire
Connect your nodes via the high-speed, low-latency FireWire. Get all the benefits of a tightly coupled cluster without the high networking costs.
Easy Setup and Monitoring
For all its computational horsepower, a cluster of Xserve systems is incredibly easy to manage and maintain. Self-monitoring hardware integrates with intuitive remote monitoring tools to provide automatic notifications if service is required.  |
