Apple Upgrades Xserve G5

The advanced G5 architecture provides an industry-leading front-side bus dedicated to each CPU as well as up to 8GB DDR SDRAM with ECC protection. That’s room enough to hold entire data sets in memory, whether you’re processing nanoscale electronics, rendering movies or caching websites. In addition, Xserve G5 features dual Gigabit Ethernet on the motherboard, which, combined with the high bandwidth system controller, means you won’t get contention between your network traffic and other I/O.

"We improved the best 1U server in the industry with more power and more storage for the same breakthrough price," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With 64-bit processing power coupled with Apple’s legendary ease of use, Xserve G5 delivers unbeatable price performance and manageability. Xserve G5 ships with an unlimited client access license of Mac OS X Server that allows users to connect an unlimited number of Mac, Windows or Linux clients to the server without additional software licensing fees."

"The 2.3 GHz Xserve formed the basis of Virginia Tech’s upgraded System X supercomputer cluster. 1,100 Xserve servers are now achieving over 12.25 trillion operations per second, a speed increase of 20 percent over the original system's performance," said Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of the Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Tech. "The Xserve G5 cluster delivers unrivaled computing power per unit density, low power consumption and lower heat dissipation at a fraction of the cost of other supercomputers."

Now equipped with dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors and up to 8GB of 400 MHz DDR memory, the new Xserve packs phenomenal computational power, revolutionary I/O and storage performance along with best-in-class management tools in an optimized 1U rack-optimized enclosure. Xserve G5 supports up to three 7200 rpm 400GB Serial ATA Apple Drive modules, offering an industry leading 1.2TB of internal storage that can deliver 800GB of internal RAID 5 protected storage when combined with Apple’s PCI Hardware RAID card. Two full-length 64-bit, 133 MHz PCI-X slots provide up to 1 GBps throughput and allow easy expansion to high performance storage and networking cards, such as SCSI, Fibre Channel and third party solutions such as InfiniBand.

Xserve G5 ships with an unlimited client edition of Mac OS® X Server version 10.3 “Panther” software pre-installed. Panther Server integrates leading open source and open standards software with easy-to-use management tools that make it easy to deploy popular open source solutions for Mac®, Windows and Linux clients.

Apple offers a choice of world-class services and support programs for Xserve including AppleCare Premium Service that offers four hour on-site response and 24x7 technical support. For self-servicing customers, Apple offers complete Service Parts Kits, which address over ninety percent of potential field problems.

The three standard Xserve G5 configurations include:

-- a single 2.0 GHz PowerPC G5 processor with 1GB of PC3200 ECC RAM, a single 80GB Apple Drive Module with expandability for up to 1.2TB, dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board, a Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) drive, FireWire® 800 and USB 2.0, and an unlimited client license of Mac OS X Server for a suggested retail price of $2,999 (US);

-- dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors with 1GB of PC3200 ECC RAM, a single 80GB Apple Drive Module with expandability for up to 1.2TB, dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board, a Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) drive, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, and an unlimited client license of Mac OS X Server for a suggested retail price of $3,999 (US); and

-- cluster-optimized dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors with 512MB of PC3200 ECC RAM, a single 80GB Apple Drive Module, dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, and a 10-client license of Mac OS X Server for a suggested retail price that starts at $2,999 (US) per cluster node.