VirginiaTech System G: A Mac Pro-based Green Supercomputer

Couple of years ago, Apple and VirginiaTech collaborated to build the most powerful supercomputer based on hundreds of G5 Xserve (named System X). Following the Intel switch, Apple did not pursue too intensively the server market, even though Xeon-based Xserve were released.
However, VirginiaTech did not give up on the idea of Mac hardware-based supercomputer, and just finished connecting 325 Mac Pro together, each one powered by 2 Quad-Core Xeon clocked at 2.8 GHz. Named System G, this supercomputer delivers 22.8 TFlops, and is twice as fast as its predecessor. The primary goal is to demonstrate that supercomputers can be both fast and a more environmentally green technology. To speed up communication between each computer, VirginiaTech used InfiniBand (40Gbs) interconnect technology. This cluster will only be around the 100th position in the top 500 Supercomputer ranking, but the purpose of System G is to provide a research platform for the development of high-performance software tools and applications with extreme efficiency at scale.