128-node Xserve G5 Cluster Achieves 1.21 TeraFlop
Written on 2/17/2005
Dr. Dean Dauger put out a press release this week about a cluster he helped build at UCLA. 128 nodes doing just over a TeraFlop!
The story is worth a read because Dr. Dauger exposes all the technical details, including what UCLA actually uses the cluster for in real life. I’ve met Dr. Dauger and he’s a swell guy, and his software makes it incredibly easy to set up a scientific cluster. A physics grad student could easily set up a cluster with his Pooch software with no techies involved at all. (Assuming you think a physics grad isn’t a techie.) 
According to Cray:
The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory.
A single Xserve G5 Cluster Node will do 9 gigaflops and costs less than $3,000.00. Amazing world we live in.
Filed in: Apple, Mac OS X Server, Xserve.