[MCQ]

http://news.com.com/Apple+sells+supe...l?tag=nefd.top

Just in time for the quarter close, 1566 servers

Colsa will use Mac OS X as the primary operating system, though it will evaluate other options including Red Hat Linux and Yellow Dog Linux, Whitlock added. MACH 5, which stands for Multiple Advanced Computers for Hypersonic, G5, will occupy 42 racks and 600 square feet of floor space, said Anthony DiRienzo, a Colsa executive vice president. Apple was the winning bidder among six companies, DiRienzo said, declining to name the competitors. One difference between MACH 5 and System X is the networking system that connects the individual servers. Where System X used the high-speed InfiniBand technology, MACH 5 will use the more conventional 1 gigabit-per-second Ethernet, DiRienzo said. The fluid dynamics simulations Colsa will run require more processor power than top networking speed, he said.

[SilentEchoes]

Oops, I probably should have checked GD before I posted my thread. Doh. Oh well. This is good news for Apple indeed. When the xServes came out I never thought they would make this kind of headway.

[DMBand0026]

This is awesome. But won't using Gb ethernet just slow it down?

I can't wait to see how fast this thing runs. Just more good news for Apple.

[Ryan]

I didn't think that Red Hat had a PPC port? I know that Yellow Dog is based off Red Hat(you can find places where they forgot to change names.). This is probably just another reporter forgeting to check his facts.

[Wickers]

Fedora has a PPC port in their devel tree. Which is most likely what the article was noting. From what I understand, it's not a great idea to use it.

[stoo]

This is awesome. But won't using Gb ethernet just slow it down?

If it doesn't need huge internode bandwidth, probably not much. It looks like the processing considerably outweighs the network needs. An extreme example of a slow intertconnect for a distributed system is SETI or RC5, which use the regular Internet to connect nodes.