big mac is number 3!
November 18, 2003 11:55 AM

No, this is not about the well-known hamburger.

I heard a rumor about this last week, and apparently it's true: Virginia Tech's Big Mac cluster is the third fastest supercomputer.

That's a big effing deal. Even though this stuff changes and the Big Mac could be beaten out fairly quickly, it's impressive to make it into the top bracket for even a picosecond.

And get this - the thing was assembled from parts you and I could buy off the shelf, for way less than the cost of any of the other supercomputors (still millions, but not hundreds of millions). Score one for Apple.

I'd like 1100 G5's on my desk. How cool would that be?

On the down side, I might have to retire all those jokes about Virginia Tech students' um, aptitudes, from my joke repository now.