The official results are in, folks, and it looks like we were right: faithful viewer Larry informs us that the official November TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers is now available, and Virginia Tech's all-Mac-based System X has indeed slipped a few rungs down the ladder. You probably recall that when the cluster debuted, it blew minds from here to Neptune by somehow ranking as the third-fastest supercomputer on the planet despite having been built entirely from off-the-shelf Macs and bolted together by student volunteers at a total cost of roughly $5 million in cash and pizza. Well, it's a year later, and System X has been upgraded from 1,100 dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5s to 1,100 custom-built dual 2.3 GHz Xserves, boosting its performance by 19 percent-- but the advent of several new high-powered supercomputers still bumped it down to seventh place.

So, as Mac users, is it time to bow our heads in shame? Hardly. Seventh place is a darn impressive rank for such an inexpensive system, especially one that's listed as "self-made"; the next-highest-ranked "self-made" system on the list is at the University of Toronto, and it's way down there at number 201. Remember, too, that System X is running Mac OS X (well, maybe Mac OS X Server, since the upgrade to Xserves), so it's probably the fastest supercomputer running a mass-market commercial operating system instead of Linux or some proprietary supercomputer-only thingy. There's only one x86-based system ranked higher (the Thunder cluster at Lawrence Livermore), and if it's running Windows we'll eat our hats. (Gee, what tipped us off-- the penguin on Thunder's home page or the fact that it's hosted at the "Linux@Livermore" site?)

And what about sheer number of processors? As faithful viewer EJC points out, System X has only 2,200 chips-- the fewest processors of any supercomputer in the top ten, and barely a quarter of the 8,192 in use by the cluster that beat it out for sixth place. So there's still plenty to feel good about, Mac-based-supercomputing-wise. Meanwhile, let's expand the scope of the warm fuzzies vibe a little and consider how much kiester the PowerPC is kicking in the supercomputer world right now: in addition to powering the top-ranked system (which is currently in the lead by nearly 20 teraflops), the PowerPC runs four of the top ten systems-- five if you count the POWER4+, which is a close relative. In contrast, there are only two Intel-based entries in the top ten, at fifth and tenth. Ha! Losers.

That said, we're still a little bummed to see System X slide out of the top five, thus forfeiting its parking space on the TOP500 home page. But at least it's still a top ten supercomputer made entirely out of Macs-- and that snooty Earth Simulator finally got taken down a peg or two as well. (Okay, two.) Guess poor lil' NEC couldn't get that SX-8 up and running in time, hmmm?