The University of Illinois is the latest institution to build a Mac-based supercomputer cluster. The university is currently finalizing the Turing Cluster, which is made up of with more than 600 Apple Xserves. “Located in the Digital Computer Laboratory, the Turing Cluster consists of 640 Apple Xserves, each with two 2GHz G5 processors and 4GB of RAM, for a total of 1280 processors. The primary network connecting the cluster machines is a high-bandwidth, low-latency Myrinet network from Myricom. In addition, all machines in the cluster are also connected by a 100 Mbs switched, full-duplex Ethernet using switches from Cisco Systems, and there is a 1 Gbs link between the front-end array and the primary Cisco switch. The operating system for the Turing Cluster is Mac OS X Server, currently version 10.3. The Turing Cluster was provided by Apple Computer under a combination purchase/donation agreement.”