The Danish Technical University (DTU) has developed Scandinavia’s largest dedicated Mac cluster, consisting of 32 dedicated Power Mac G4 Dual 800 MHz workstations which is equal to 200 Gigaflop or 6 million instructions per second.
The cluster, which is called Velocity-X, will be switched on Monday the 24th of June 2002 with the presence of Apple Denmark.
The dedicated Mac cluster will primary be used to understand proteins influence on cancer and larger project for film and animation.
Velocity-X can be rented for approx 50.000 Danish kroner per week for use through the Internet ($1 = 8.5 DKK).
More on this news story and the technical specifications on Velocity-X can be found at macnyt.dk.
Macs are the best!!! Nuff said
If this were /. I would have had to post a comment about Beowolf clusters, but sence this isn’t I won’t… I hope that was as funny to yall as it is to me…
in the 3rd milennium to gather 32 Computers in a room..? I think not. every university has serveral times more down stairs – not Macs, but computers. I don’t tink that the number of machines makes this ‘newsworthy’ (actually, it isn’t..), nor does the raw processing power. The only thing is that it’s Macs that got connected togehter for a change. Seeing how few they are and being the only in northern europe, this brings to light the desolate state the mac is at these days, nothing more. This is the only newsworthy part to it but of course we all new this already.
Is this what it takes to make writing a letter or browsing the web tolerably quick?
Hello everybody,
What I want to know here is, where’s da pictures? I mean, it is one thing to setup a sweet cluster of macs, but quite another to setup a sweet cluster of macs, photograph it and brag on the Internet =P. Who’s with me? I want pics!
Skipp
PS. Please someone start a discussion here, this topic doesn’t leave much to go on. (Speed: I know your out there)
Hey I bet OSX runs just peachy with all that power now…..
it still takes 5 minutes to resize a finder window.
🙂
A workstation cluster. Big deal.
Now why didn’t they use the new Apple xServers?
Oh, must be that they are at least $1k more per box.
Now why didn’t they use the new Apple xServers?
Oh, must be that they are at least $1k more per box.
Or that they’re not out yet.
While I really do like OS X[0], this probably isn’t the best application for it. Darwin on cheaper hardware, with a couple workstations for a frontend seems more sensible. The right tool for the job.
[0] I wonder how many people that talk about Mac OS X being slow have actually used it, and how many are just going on hear say. It seems to run pretty well on the G4 Cube and new iMac (with lots of RAM).
Sorry Speed. Some of us use our computers… for way more than word or internet browsing. You see there is more to it than Microsoft Office.
Does the cluster run on OS X, Mac OS 9, Linux? I couldn’t find this info in the link or the os news blurb. Maybe I missed it?
How many people making fun of OS X have even used it lately?
I haven’t had the (mis?)fortune of running version 10.0 which I’ve heard was painfully slow, but I do have a new iMac and 10.1.5 and everything’s running just fine. It’s not the fastest in display all the time, some badly ported apps (AIM) can be quite slow. But most apps run just fine. (I’m used to BeOS, which anyone that’s used it will atleast contest to it’s speed and I think this is just fine.) I’ve been using my Mac for everything and love it. I’m not gonna argue about switching or anything, I just want to know if all the people joking about speed have even tried it lately.
Being deal 32 mac in one room! A couple years ago I strung 64 atari 2600 together to develop one of the most powerfull parallel systems in the world…Let me just say that I played on hell of an asteroid game.
10.1.5 is significantly faster than 10.0. I have a G3 powerbook (firewire) with 10.1.5 and as far a general OS use goes it’s faster than my friends G4 with 10.0. OS X is great; the first release just wasn’t ready for public consumption…
I wonder how many people that talk about Mac OS X being slow have actually used it, and how many are just going on hear say. It seems to run pretty well on the G4 Cube and new iMac (with lots of RAM).
I tried it again last weekend on the PowerMac G4 Dual 1ghz; web surfing is much more faster than my 1ghz Duron box with 1/4 of the RAM; or on my 1.1ghz Pentium3 laptop with Windows XP and 1/2 of the RAM there
Quartz is very resource hungry. Quartz Extreme (as I heard) needs at least a 32mb graphics card to run at advertised speed… But I don’t really know what’s behind Quartz; all I know it is something to do with PDF.
My take: I have been University clusters larger than this before; not exactly an accomplishment. Maybe it is a accomplishment seeing that they bought 32 PowerMacs (kidding).
6 million instructions per second, eh? So this cluster is slower than my old ‘030 Amiga was?
Actually, Quartz Extreme only requires 2x AGP and a 16MB video card. Natuurally it prefers better hardware, but you’ll get the benefit of it on the lesser configuration as well.
>>Maybe it is a accomplishment seeing that they bought 32 PowerMacs (kidding).<<
Or that they could afford 32 PowerMacs he he 🙂
I’ve been dual booting BeOS and Linux (various) on a 700Mhz/384MB PC since BeOS R4.
A couple months ago, I bought a used iMac (G3 400Mhz 384MB RAM, 7200RPM HDD). I did this for the sole purpose of using OS X to see what it was like.
OS X is NOT slow. BeOS was faster; for sure – but its faster than any modern OS. Its a shade faster than Linux (and thats with Linux on a 32MB Radeon 4x AGP, and OS X on an 8MB Rage Pro VR 2X AGP).
And I’ve used RH, Mandrake, SUSE, Debian, Slackware, OpenLinux and more. OS X is more responsive than any of them out of the box on “lesser” hardware.
Actually, Quartz Extreme only requires 2x AGP and a 16MB video card. Natuurally it prefers better hardware, but you’ll get the benefit of it on the lesser configuration as well.
Windows XP requires 128mb of RAM yet everyone agrees that 256mb is minimum. Quartz Extreme wouldn’t see its best potential with 16mb of video RAM.
And I’ve used RH, Mandrake, SUSE, Debian, Slackware, OpenLinux and more. OS X is more responsive than any of them out of the box on “lesser” hardware.
Weird…
You neglected to tell the versions of Mandrake, SuSE, and Slackware you installed. Also, did you install the latest stuff like the latest KDE (which increase your performance), the latest XFree (which also increases your performance) and so on?
Also, you have neglected to tell the specs of your PC, and the processor type (e.g. Celeron, Duron, Pentium III etc.).
So, in conclusion, it is a bad comparison. Also, Radeon on Linux is bad… I mean bad (as in performance). Also; I found using my Duron 1ghz to surf faster than a PowerMac G4 Dual 1ghz with about 4 times the RAM (on Linux, Opera 6.01, Konqueror 3, Galeon 1.2, Mozilla 1.0 and so on; while on Mac OS X is OmniWeb 1.1beta and IE 5.something – the only two browsers the store had).
Anyway, if you are using KDE; turn off animation for shading because I’m gathering that is why shading is taking so long for your. Turning it off would cause shading to be almost instant.
Or that they could afford 32 PowerMacs he he 🙂
Or they know what is a Mac hehe 🙂
>>Weird…
You neglected to tell the versions of Mandrake, SuSE, and Slackware you installed. Also, did you install the latest stuff like the latest KDE (which increase your performance), the latest XFree (which also increases your performance) and so on? <<
All recent versions, 8.2 Mandrake, 7.2 RH, 8.0 Slack etc.
>>Also, you have neglected to tell the specs of your PC, and the processor type (e.g. Celeron, Duron, Pentium III etc.). <<
Tyan S2390 mobo. Duron 700mhz CPU. 384MB Crucial PC133 CAS2 RAM. Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD.
>>So, in conclusion, it is a bad comparison. Also, Radeon on Linux is bad… I mean bad (as in performance).<<
Well to bad for Linux. Radeons have about half the installed userbase when it comes to a modern gfx card. I suppose a GeForce will do wonders?
>>Anyway, if you are using KDE; turn off animation for shading because I’m gathering that is why shading is taking so long for your. Turning it off would cause shading to be almost instant. <<
Or instead of disabling/recompiling/reconfiguring why don’t I just not use Linux? You are very presumptuous. Even when you cripple the GUI effects of KDE its still slower. Not that I would want to run a GUI with a bunch of features turned off.
OS X is more responsive on an iMac G3 400MHZ with 8MB RAGE than Linux is on a 700MHZ Duron with a 32mb Radeon – – PERIOD.
And guess what? The HDD and RAM from my PC was the HDD and RAM that I put in the iMac!
I’m not saying “Linux sucks”. I use it. I had it on my PC, and now its on my Mac. But don’t be so blind, it is NOT the OS of choice for either ease of use or out of the box performance. It needs more work yet.