Xserve G5s to Replace PowerMacs in 'Big Mac'?

apple is going to refurb then resell to the public! :D

I bet they could sell them on the cheap to another university wanting to make an inexpensive top 5 super computer. Sell the whole lot for 10% off and that's a pretty sweet deal for a super computer.

And if true it does give the possibility that they could add more Xserves than the current 1100 PowerMacs, since it's going to be taking up a lot less space.

do the xserves have as much computing power as the dual g5s?

edit: the apple site suggests the xserve can do 9.0Gigaflops.

EBay! EBay! EBay! EBay! :D

Originally posted by punter
do the xserves have as much computing power as the dual g5s?

edit: the apple site suggests the xserve can do 9.0Gigaflops.

They should have the same processing power.

The old G5's will be either refurbished or taken to another university wanting a similar setup or give to charity.

The Xserve and the PM G5 should be roughly similar in compute power. The big wins would be ECC memory in the new Xserve, much easier to manage spacewise and lower power consumption (0.09um chips in the Xserve).

On the other hand installing and rewiring would be a fairly massive task. If I were running the VT array it would probably hinge on how important having ECC would be to the current machine.

I agree that they will probably refurb them. I wonder if Apple will drop the price of the refurbs since they'll have so many? Doubtful but with, hopefully, new powermacs out soon the dual 2gig will drop in price. Could be a good time to get a sweet deal on a G5.

I think VT won't mind getting the rumored 2.3GHz Xserves instead of the listed 2.0 ones ;)

Wow that would kick ass. They'd be getting faster machines, plus they'd be making room for MORE machines. #2 Supercomputer anybody?