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System X (pronounced ''"System Ten"'') was a
supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...
assembled by
Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...
's Advanced Research Computing facility in the summer of 2003. Costing US$5.2 million, it was originally composed of 1,100
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
Power Mac G5 computers with dual 2.0 GHz processors. System X was decommissioned on May 21, 2012. The supercomputer is also known as Big Mac or Terascale Cluster. System X ran at 12.25 Teraflops, (20.24 peak), and was ranked #3 on November 16, 2003 and #280 in the July 2008 edition of the
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...
list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. The system used error-correcting ( ECC) RAM, which is important for accuracy due to the rate of bits flipped by
cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...
s or other interference sources in its vast number of RAM chips.


Background

The supercomputer's name originates from the use of the Mac OS X
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
for each node, and because it was the first university computer to achieve 10 teraflops on the high performance LINPACK benchmark. In 2003 it was also touted as "the world's most powerful and cheapest homebuilt supercomputer." System X was constructed with a relatively low budget of just $5.2 million, in the span of only three months, thanks in large part to using off-the-shelf Power Mac G5 computers. By comparison, the Earth Simulator, the fastest supercomputer at the time, cost approximately $400 million to build.


Upgrade to Server-Grade Parts

In 2004, Virginia Tech upgraded its computer to Apple's newly released, Xserve G5 servers. The upgraded version ranked #7 in the 2004
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...
list and its server-grade error-correcting memory solved the problem of cosmic ray interference. In October 2004, Virginia Tech partially rebuilt System X at a cost of about $600,000. These improvements brought the computer's speed up to 12.25 Teraflops, which placed System X #14 on the 2005
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...
list.


Similar Projects

Virginia Tech's system was the model for Xseed, a smaller system also made from Xserve servers and built by Bowie State University in
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
. Xseed was ranked #166 in the 2005
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...
. System G has 324 Mac Pros (2592 processor cores) with QDR InfiniBand in Virginia Tech's Center for High-End Computing Systems.


See also

* History of supercomputing


References


External links


Virginia Tech - System X
(via
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
)
CHECS Computing Resources: Experimental Facilities - System G, Production Computing Facilities - System X
(via
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
)
Virginia Tech - Advanced Research Computing

TOP500 website

Film about System X, YouTube
{{DEFAULTSORT:System X (Computing) One-of-a-kind computers Supercomputers Virginia Tech