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Got some spare PowerMac's?

istar1018

Well-known member
Wow, I had not seen the AppleCrate before. That is really something.

There was a time when this AppleSeed was really useful - you might remember when Virginia Tech made a supercomputer out of a bunch of G4s, but now... even the low end mini has more oomph than a moderately sized cluster of G3s. Considering the difference in power consumption involved, there's no real reason to make a PPC cluster - except as a fun / hobby / intro to parallel computing type of thing.

 

Christopher

Well-known member
I would only bother doing it because I would like to see if it would benefit my 733MHz quicksilver if I put a 450MHz AGP Graphics G4 with it, I doubt though because it has only 100Mb ethernet, and not 1Gb, its worth a try.

 

quinterro

Well-known member
Wow, I had not seen the AppleCrate before. That is really something.
There was a time when this AppleSeed was really useful - you might remember when Virginia Tech made a supercomputer out of a bunch of G4s, but now... even the low end mini has more oomph than a moderately sized cluster of G3s. Considering the difference in power consumption involved, there's no real reason to make a PPC cluster - except as a fun / hobby / intro to parallel computing type of thing.
Or if you need a space heater? ;)

 

LCGuy

LC Doctor/Hot Rodder
Wow, I had not seen the AppleCrate before. That is really something.
There was a time when this AppleSeed was really useful - you might remember when Virginia Tech made a supercomputer out of a bunch of G4s, but now... even the low end mini has more oomph than a moderately sized cluster of G3s. Considering the difference in power consumption involved, there's no real reason to make a PPC cluster - except as a fun / hobby / intro to parallel computing type of thing.
VT never used G4s, but they did make a cluster of 1100 G5s back in 2003, which they later upgraded to custom built 2.3 Ghz Xserve G5 Cluster Nodes. (this was before the 2.3 Ghz variant was released to the public, so they were built especially for VT) Its still running too, they lease time on it to outside companies.

linky

 

istar1018

Well-known member
I stand corrected. I forgot when they started that the Xserve was stuck with G4 chips, so they made their system out of Power Mac G5s and then later upgraded to Xserves when they took advantage of the new chips. Thanks for the link, LCGuy.

 
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