University of Illinois Launches 640 Xserve Turing Cluster

Smaller than the Virginia Tech and the massive US Army clusters, this is still an impressive implementation. While it doesn’t appear that they are aiming to compete in the super-computer realm, they have put together a powerful system. These are dual 2GHz G5s, so that’s 1280 processors and each Xserve has 4GB of RAM.

There is one thing that this cluster has that I believe wasn’t available in the VT cluster:

The Turing Cluster is available to students and faculty for school-related projects. The school’s Usage Policies specify that “the cluster is to be used for scientific and engineering computational jobs only; no other work is allowed.” In addition, sponsors of the program, all different departments in schools in the University of Illinois, can utilize the system for their own projects.

Too cool. Check out their site for pictures and a live webcam.

Via TMO.