Virginia Tech’s new G5-based supercomputing center isn’t the only place that Macs are being used for scientific research, writes Matthew Herper. Herper’s new Forbes.com article, Apple’s Supercomputing Scientists, profiles some of the other uses for Macs in the scientific world.
Take David Botstein, for example — the head of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University outfitted his center “almost soup to nuts with Apple computers and servers,” according to Herper. Texas A&M associated professor David Adelson is another supporter of Macs in genomics — he’s helped to develop a software system used for clustering Xserves. Then there’s University of New Hampshire professor Will Gilbert, who uses an iPod to occasionally shuttle information from one server to another.
Apple’s outlook in biotech isn’t rosy everywhere: MIT-affiliated bioresearch center The Whitehead Institute said it’s actually cutting back the number of Macs it uses. And analysts like Aberdeen Group’s Peter Kastner don’t see efforts like what’s happening at Virginia Tech as big financial wins for Apple. Even Apple director of product management, server hardware Alex Grossman confesses that Apple isn’t seen as a supercomputer company right now. This could change, though. Kastner predicts that 2004 could be the year when Apple makes up its mind about whether to make a serious play for the enterprise space.