I found this part to be of particular note:

"Right from the start there were major hurdles that could only be overcome
with significant construction in and around the building.

Running 1,100 computers in a 3,000-square-foot (280-sq-metres) area sends
the air temperature well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius).

The heat is so intense that ordinary air conditioning units would have
resulted in 60-mph (95 km/h) winds. Specialised heat exchange cooling units
were built that pipe chilled water into the facility.

"There are two chillers for this project," explained Kevin Shinpaugh,
Director of Cluster Computing.

"They're rated 125 tonnes each in cooling capacity, and they pump 750
gallons per minute each. The water is at about 45 degrees Fahrenheit."

The power supply was another huge challenge. The supercomputer uses the same
amount of electricity as 3,000 average sized homes. "
__________
"Never ask a man what sort of computer he drives. If it's a Mac, he'll tell
you. If not, why embarrass him?"

--Tom Clancy

> From: Jim McHugh <Jim_McHugh@...>
> Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:51:52 -0700
> To: Einar Stefferud <stef@...>, Kevin Elwell
> <kdelwell@...>
> Cc: John Brennan <jb@...>
> Subject: Apple powers college supercomputer
>
> BBC News - Sunday, 12 October, 2003
>
> Apple powers college supercomputer - By Ian Hardy
>
>
> Everyone would love a supercomputer but with a price tag of around $100m
> each they are not easy to come by.
>
> But in the United States staff and students at Virginia Tech have built one
> of the world's most powerful supercomputers for just $5m by plugging
> together hundreds of the latest computers from Apple.
>
> The project involved placing 1,100 brand new Apple G5 towers side by side,
> making it the world's most powerful "homebuilt" system.
>
> It is capable of 17.6 trillion floating point operations per second, with a
> combined storage capacity of 176 terabytes.
>
> "Each individual G5 is a dual processor, 2GHZ machine with 4GB of memory. So
> it's extremely fast," said Pat Arvin, Project Coordinator at Virginia Tech.
> . . . <snip>
>
> © BBC MMIII
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3180872.stm
>