Apple supercomputer breaks the sound barrier

A US Army contractor has purchased a $5.8m, 1,566-server supercomputer from Apple - a real-world cousin to an academic system that briefly appeared high on a list of the most powerful machines.

In November, a machine called System X with 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5 workstations climbed to third place on the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers. On Monday, Colsa announced it's buying a larger system called MACH 5 to run Army simulations of the aerodynamics of flight much faster than the speed of sound.

System X, which vanished from the most recent list for upgrades, had sustained performance of 10.3 trillion calculations per second, or teraflops. The Colsa system, made of dual-processor Xserve G5 machines, is expected to reach about 15 teraflops when it's up and running this fall, said project manager Mike Whitlock.

By comparison, the fastest system on a new version of the Top500 list, NEC's Earth Simulator, runs at a speed of 35.8 teraflops, and only one other system exceeded 15 teraflops.

Stephen Shankland writes for News.com