Features:

MAC SUPERCOMPUTER MAY RANK WITH THE FASTEST

1,100 personal computers have been connected by faculty, technicians and students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute to create one of the fastest machines in the world, at a relatively inexpensive cost of approximately $5 million. In addition, this has been done in just one month.

In an industry where the fastest machines traditionally cost $100 million to $250 million and take years to build, the VA Tech supercomputer is swiftly gaining attention in the high performance computing world.

Jack Dongarra, the University of Tennessee computer scientist who possesses a list of the 500 fastest computers in the world, says that the Apple Macintosh based supercomputer has been successfully tested in recent days.

Although the official ranking results will not be known until next month, the VA Tech supercomputer processed 7.41 trillion operations a second using 2,200 IBM microprocessors. Only three other ultra-fast computers have topped such a speed.

The Japanese Earth Simulator, a machine at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a cluster at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories all presently claim top spots on the list of fastest computers.

Although the results are still being finalized, VA Tech officials hope that the ultimate speed of the supercomputer will be even higher.

School scientists met with Apple executives shortly after the company unveiled its new 64-bit desktop computer in June. VA Tech was first in line to receive the machines and, in September, student volunteers began to help assemble the system. They were enticed by free pizza and football tickets for their efforts.

After trailing Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in computing speed for the past few years, Apple is pleased with the initial results of the supercomputer. Experts are hoping that such high speeds will become a normal occurrence.

While the Japanese computer processed 35.8 trillion operations per second, it cost about $250 million dollars. On the other hand, the Lawrence Livermore system processes 7.63 trillion operations per second and costs about $10 to $15 million. The initial results of the VA Tech supercomputer have forced researchers to drastically reexamine the cost-to-performance equation.