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The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has developed a 640 XServe supercomputer, named the Turing Cluster, capable of 5 teraflops, eWeek reports. Although this makes the XServe cluster only the 30th most powerful in the world, it represents a more than 1,000% improvement on the university's previous system. More importantly, the cluster was put together on a relative shoestring for a supercomputer - around $3 million. That includes hardware, infrastructure and part of the labor costs. Apple Ed was consulted and helped put the whole she-bang together: Cupertino developed the specifications for the system, having assessed the university's needs. "We went with Apple because the price/performance ratio was better than anything else we saw," said Prof. Michael Heath, the project's director, who is quoted in the article. Analysis: Impressive. And impressively cheap for such power. Wonder if the IRS could stuff the entire USA's tax records in it?
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