Apple Computer Systems

California Digital delivers complete computing solutions based on industry-leading Apple Xserve G5 hardware. California Digital's Apple clusters include comprehensive software support and MPICH libraries specifically optimized for stability and performance for infiniband on OS X.

California Digital can architect cluster solutions for specific applications and users, though we've found our standard cluster designs to be useful starting points. We assume the use of two head nodes, an efficiency of 60% over a full-bandwidth infiniband interconnect (except for half bandwidth for the 100Tflop cluster). The Rpeak and Rmax values are for LINPACK.

Apple Clusters

The floating point performance of the G5 processor delivers exceptional value in teraflops per dollar. The values quoted below are for LINPACK execution; results on user applications will vary.

These clusters are built from the following basic components:

• Dual 2.3GHz G5 Xserve compute nodes
• Infiniband interconnect (Full bisection)
• 4GB RAM per node
• 80GB local storage per node
• Two head/management nodes
• Gigabit ethernet interconnection
• California Digital OS X-optimized MPICH for infiniband
• IBM XLC and XLF compilers

All clusters are commissioned as turnkey implementations with complete node and interconnect installation, configuration, stabilization, and software configuration. California Digital clusters include an OS X MPICH implementation customized and optimized for infiniband.

Node Configuration

XServe cluster compute nodes can be configured with varying amounts of RAM and be interconnected with either gigabit ethernet or infiniband. The Configurator allows you to examine possible configuration choices:

Standard
$3600
Dual 2.3GHz
2GB
80GB
GB only
OS X
Total OS X Coverage
	CONFIGURE