By coincidence I had been following another rather interesting supercomputer project at Virginia Tech wherein a cluster of Mac G5 personal computers, purchased off-the-shelf, had been configured to produce the third fastest supercomputer on Earth - and at a cost of only $5.2 million.

This price was in sharp contrast to the cost of the Number 1 supercomputer in the world (located in Japan) which, according to Virginia Tech, had a cost within "a range of $350 million to $400 million with an upwards figure of $1 billion when support for the entire resource is added."

My first thought was to check the cost of the new NASA computer. Since no cost was included in the otherwise geeky-detail laden NASA press release, I contacted the NASA ARC PAO representative, Mike Mewhinney.

After some exchanges and fact checking, Mike told me that the cost to NASA over a three year period is $9.5 million and that this includes leasing hardware, support services, and all operating software.

Not at all bad for NASA which often seems to relish the opportunity to pay too much for something. Indeed, a very encouraging sign.

It would seem that NASA is hoping on the same bandwagon as Virginia Tech and looking at how off-the shelf (or near-off-the-shelf) clustered applications can produce world-class computing capabilities at a miniscule cost when compared to 'traditional' supercomputing behemoths.

Related links

• Virginia Tech's Power Mac G5-based 'X' Supercomputer is officially number 3 in the world
• NASA Ames Installs World's First 512-Processor Altix Supercomputer
• Charting the Ocean Future, SGI

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