According to this article, "Virginia Tech's decision to build a supercomputer out of 1,100 Apple Power Mac G5s -- a true break from the architecture of traditional, mainframe supercomputers -- allowed the university to cut its costs in half. According to researchers, the supercomputer represents a new model for ultra high-end computing in science and research."

Of course I'd love to see it running on Windows.... but I'm mostly wondering what other non-traditional applications there might be for supercomputing now that it's going cheap??