Virginia Tech Rep Comments On Why G5 Super Computer Is Important

by , 10:00 AM EDT, September 23rd, 2003

IDG News Services has published a story about Virginia Tech's G5 Super Computer. The Super Computer was announced earlier this month, and will be built from 1100 dual processor 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5s, each with 4 GB of RAM, for a total of 2200 CPUs and more than 4 Terrabytes of RAM. The announcement has been touted by those near and far as a big opportunity for Apple, including positive comments from BusinessWeek.

While there's little new information in IDG's article, it did include a very interesting comment from Lynn Nystrom, a Virginia Tech spokeswoman, about why the Super Computer is important to the university that we found interesting. From the article:

"This (cluster) allows us to do the big science research projects we couldn't do in the past," Nystrom said. "We're the only university in Virginia in the top 50 academic research institutions, and we want to be in the top 30 by 2010, and we need a supercomputer to meet those goals." Virgina Tech is ranked 49th in the U.S. as measured by research expenditures, just ahead of the California Institute of Technology.

You can read the full article at IDG's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The moral of this story, without putting too much effort reading between the lines, is that if you super computing is important to you, and you have a limited budget, Think Different(ly). Funny, that, considering Apple's perceived reputation of being too expensive.

IDG Article