Running with Dinosaurs

This Apple Science podcast features Professors Phillip Manning and Bill Sellers of the University of Manchester and the rare find of fossilized dinosaur skin by the Marmarth Research Foundation. The University relies on Macs to create physiologically correct models of the 65 million-year-old hadrosaur and to discover clues about dinosaur movement. Applying the latest data to the locomotion model required powerful computing resources. Rather than rely on the university’s HPC cluster, they decided on a dedicated cluster that could run millions of trial simulations in parallel. The newly introduced 8-core Mac Pro allowed Sellers to install his own 60-core Mac Pro cluster. Xgrid enabled him to run simulations across multiple systems; verify the qualifications of the desktop systems he pulls in from the campus network to harvest unused processor cycles; and review results on a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display during runs. Mac computers provided not only power, but a cluster that was easy to install, maintain and scale.