* Apple contest intends to give server clusters to deserving scientists
Apple is holding a contest to award server clusters to scientific organizations doing bioinformatics research.
The company will hand out five Macintosh xServer-based Workgroup Clusters and software to scientific researchers in order to entice more scientists to use its hardware and software for bioinformatics research.
Each cluster will consist of four dual-processor Xserve G5s, provisioned with 2G bytes of RAM, an APC Smart-UPS 2200 uninterruptible power supply, cabling and a GX5-800 Gigabit Ethernet switch. BioTeam Inquiry, 200 pre-installed bioinformatics applications and three years of service and support will be included. BioTeam Inquiry is a clustered bioinformatics tool that serves as a portal for distributed computing.
Apple has installed its clusters in a variety of university settings. Among them is at Virginia Tech, where scientists installed 1,100 dual-processor PowerMac G5s. The supercomputer cluster at Virginia Tech ranks as No. 3 in the Top 500 list of fastest supercomputers. Code-named System X, the cluster at Virginia Tech, which cost $5.2 million, has been upgraded to xServe G5 servers.
Apple has also spent time beefing up its software for the scientific community. The company is now on its second preview of its Xgrid software, intended for scientific research.
The second version includes a command-line tool for submitting and monitoring jobs from the command-line, Message Passing Interface (MPI) support, allowing Xgrid to configure and launch executables linked against MacMPI libraries.
A group of scientists will decide who gets the clusters. The deadline for submitting applications is June 13. The cluster winners will be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next month, where Apple is expected to unveil a beta version of the next Mac OS X release, dubbed Tiger.
CORRECTION: A recent newsletter about Falcon UPSes should have stated that it could take four to 24 seconds for a generator to kick in.
