History and Use

System X is a supercomputer assembled by Virginia Tech faculty members, staff, and students in the summer of 2003, comprising 1,100 Apple PowerMac G5 computers. System X is currently running at 12.25 Teraflops, (20.24 peak), and was last ranked #47 (November, 2006) in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. At that time, it was still the most powerful system categorized by TOP500 as "self made" at any university. It is now part of Virginia Tech's suite of high performance computers being used for research.

The supercomputer's name (pronounced "System Ten") originates from the original goal of 10 teraflops on the high performance LINPACK benchmark. On November 16, 2003, it was ranked by the TOP500 list as the third-fastest supercomputer in the world -- and "the world's most powerful and cheapest homebuilt supercomputer."

System X was constructed in a few months with a relatively low investment of $5.2 million, using souped up off-the-shelf G5 computers with dual-2.0 GHz processors. (By comparison, the Earth Simulator, the fastest supercomputer at that time, cost approximately $400 million to build.)

In early 2004, Virginia Tech upgraded its computer to Apple's newly-released Xserve G5 servers; the upgraded version was #7 in the 2004 TOP500 list, and cost one-fifth as much as the second least-expensive system in the top 10.

In October of 2004, Virginia Tech partially rebuilt System X at a cost of about $600,000. These improvements brought the computer's speed up to 12.25 Teraflops, which placed System X #14 on the 2005 TOP500 list.

In 2005, the communication fiber and switches were upgraded and System X was retired from competition to become a full-time research production resource.

Time on System X is available free of charge to Virginia Tech faculty members and students, and to external users who are collaborating with Virginia Tech researchers. More than 50 research projects have been awarded time on the system. These projects represent a wide cross-section of applications including materials (25.8 percent of allocated time), fluids (25.2 percent), biology (18.2 percent), and chemistry (10.9 percent).

System administrators work with users to make sure that the high-capability potential of System X is available for jobs that require it. For example, approximately 35 percent of the 5.6 million CPU-hours that were used during the first nine months of 2006 were devoted to jobs requiring 200 or more CPUs.

System X Construction Images
     Initial Project Gallery
     Upgrade Gallery