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Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) delivery of its Xserve-based MACH5 supercomputer to COLSA Corporation means more than validation of its role in the world of high-performance computing, according to Horst Simon, associate laboratory director of computing sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in California.
Simon, also a co-author of the Top 500 list that tracks supercomputers internationally, believes this is an exciting time for the whole industry.
"There has never been such turnover on the list," he told MacNewsWorld. "Only 70 systems remain from November 2002 out of [the present-day] 500, which means purchasing activity is high for high-performance computing."
Apple 'More Suitable' for High-Performance Computing?
Illuminata senior analyst Gordon Haff thinks Apple's recently announced deal 
with COLSA [Blane Warrene, "US Army Drafts Apple Xserve for Supercomputer," MacNewsWorld, June 22, 2004] gives the company the credibility to make further inroads in "sci-tech" at lower levels as well.
"They are seeing wins in biotech with smaller deals, and this deal legitimizes the PowerPC architecture they are using in their products," Haff told MacNewsWorld.
Simon agreed and added that IBM's (NYSE: IBM) investments over the last decade in entering the supercomputing market have paid off.
"Linux may be considered the de facto standard for Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD) architectures, but the G5 [PowerPC chip] -- at least in science -- may be more suitable than other platforms," he said.
Simon cautioned that Apple cannot stop just at providing the hardware and software if the company wants a long-term place in the high-performance market. In his view, you cannot simply pile up hardware to achieve a benchmark and be taken seriously by veterans in the industry.
"Apple has an opportunity to get deep into this market if they also tackle system software and integration," Simon contended.
Shifts in Dominance
For his part, computer scientist Erich Strohmaier, also at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the move toward commodity -- or industry-standard -- components is a recent trend.
"During the last three years, we have seen a strongly increasing number of systems in the Top 500 built with commodity nodes as building blocks," he told MacNewsWorld. "These clusters are typically built with Intel Xeon, Itanium 2, AMD Opteron -- and now also with PowerPC processors."
According to Simon, technology has shifted from pure custom systems of the 1980s like Cray (Nasdaq: CRAY) and server technologies of the 1990s to leveraged PC-based technology now.
"If you had told someone Dell or Apple would be on the Top 500 three years ago, [he or she] may have laughed," he said. "Now 60 percent of the list is dominated by standard clustered systems."
A Fork in the Road
Simon and Haff both think there are really two tiers to supercomputing, a premium level of perhaps 100 systems worldwide -- and then the remaining 400 listed on Top 500.
"There are still and will always be reasons to use big iron like the Cray systems -- and for that matter --- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) continues to fund those initiatives," Haff said. "However, Apple can surely make some money and have some fun in this market."
Strohmaier differentiates the two tiers as those with power-intensive needs and those that also need the communication link to be substantial.
"Compared to traditional supercomputer architectures, these cluster systems are more limited in their communication abilities, as they are not as tightly integrated. However, for the subset of applications which do not require such tightly integrated systems, clusters tend to provide a good price-performance ratio," he said.
For his part, Simon believes the evolution in the field benefits all involved, including newcomers who might not need systems as large as those on the Top 500.
"There is incredible demand, as many have waited with their applications for a lower cost point to enter the market," he said. "The political support in Congress and all the way up to the office of science and technology in the White House also furthers the field."
Buzz Outshines other Tech Sectors
Simon recounted an intriguing story from SC 2003, an international conference on supercomputing.
"This is an indicator of the growth in this market. While I was at SC 03 in Phoenix, I bumped into a reporter from the New York Times [who] told me he had left Comdex to come here," Simon recalled.
"The buzz and excitement was far greater on SC than in Las Vegas," where Comdex was held.
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