The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is one of the latest educational institutions to set up a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster using Macintosh computers. The university’s Turing Xserve Cluster comprises 640 Apple Xserve G5 systems.
The Turing Xserve Cluster’s Xserves are dual-processor 2GHz models, each equipped with 4GB of RAM. The systems communicate with each other using Myricom’s Myrinet networking hardware, especially designed for cluster applications, as well as Ethernet switches from Cisco Systems. Mac OS X Server v10.3 is the operating system running on all the Xserves.
The Xserve Turing Cluster has been set up for use “on a limited basis” to UIUC’s students, faculty and staff affiliated with the Computational Science and Engineering program.