Remember a few weeks ago I told you about the supercomputer that Virginia Tech was building by stringing together 1056 Dual 2Ghz PowerMac G5s? Since then they have named the grouping "Big Mac". Come on, they're computer geeks, what do you expect? More importantly, how are they doing? This year's testing is under way to determine the fastest supercomputer on the planet. The testing consists of giving the computers a complicated mathematical equation to crunch. Speed is measured in "flops", which stands for "floating-point operations per second". Are your eyes rolling back yet? Hang with me.

So far this year's leader, by a pretty significant margin, is a cluster of 5120 NEC vector processors (not commercially available), called "Earth Simulator", which is run by the Marine Science and Technology Center in Japan. Earth Simulator's "speed" is rated at 35860 Gigaflops (Gflops), or billions of flops. That's more flops than Vlade Divacs (alright, it's an obscure reference, but it's basketball season and I had to go for it). In second place, crunching 13880 Gflops, is a cluster of 8160 computers equipped with the AlphaServer processor, with each one running at 1.25 GHz. In third place (drum roll, please) - Big Mac and the Techies from Virginia, with their 2112 total 2 Ghz G5 processors cranking out 9555 Gflops. Note that Big Mac's Gflop numbers are competitive, even with half, even a quarter, of the number of processors of the top two systems. Third place. Not bad for a bunch of out-of-the-box Macs.

If you’re planning on staying on Jaguar for awhile, and have been using the iChatAV beta, your time is running out. Sometime soon the beta will expire. The final version is available from the AppleStore online for $29.95. Or, you could just upgrade to Panther and get it thrown in for free.

Speaking of upgrading to Panther, you have three options, two of which I have done with no ill effects. You can select “Upgrade”, and your old OSX files are replaced (overwritten) with the Panther files. Or, you can use the “Archive and Install” option (a lot like the OS9 “clean install”). The installer creates an entirely new System, and moves all your User files (Documents, Pictures, Music, Preferences, etc.) to where they should be, leaving you the opportunity to peruse the old System files for third-party stuff. The third is to completely erase your drive and start over. Make sure you back up your important documents (duh).

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski