The Xserve G5 The Xserve G5 Cluster Node |
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| Developer | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| Type | Rackmounted Server |
| Release date | January 6, 2004 |
| Discontinued | November 2006 |
| CPU | Single or dual PowerPC G5, 2 GHz – 2.3 GHz |
| Website | apple.com/xserve |
On January 6, 2004 Apple introduced the Xserve G5, a redesigned higher-performance Xserve. The 32-bit PowerPC G4s were replaced with one or two 64-bit PowerPC 970 processors running at 2 GHz. Up to 16 GiB of PC-3200 ECC memory was supported on a 128-bit memory bus. One FireWire 400 port (front), two FireWire 800 ports (rear), two USB 2.0 ports (rear), an RS-232 management interface (rear), and two onboard gigabit Ethernet ports (rear) with TCP offload provided greater connectivity. A 133 MHz/64-bit and a 100 MHz/64-bit PCI-X slots rounded out its expansion options. Ventilation issues restricted it to three SATA hot-swap drive bays (80 GB or 250 GB each), with the original space for the fourth drive bay used for air vents. The front plate and slot-loading optical drive (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW optional) were retained from the last Xserve G4.
Three configuration options were available: a single-processor Xserve G5 with 512 MiB of memory at $2999, a dual-processor Xserve G5 with 1 GiB of memory at $3999, and a dual-processor cluster node model (with an unchanged appearance from the G4 cluster node) featuring 512 MiB of memory, no optical drive, a single hard drive bay, and a 10-client version of "Panther" Server at $2999.
The higher memory capacity and bandwidth of the Xserve G5 as well as the stronger floating-point performance of the PowerPC 970 made it more suitable for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. System X is one such cluster computer built with Xserves.
On January 3, 2005, Apple speed bumped the Xserve G5 with 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970 processors in the dual-processor configurations. 400 GB hard disks were made available for up to 1.2TB of internal storage. The slot-loading optical drive was upgraded to a combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW standard, DVD-/+RW optional.
Soon after, Apple updated the Xserve and Xserve RAID to allow the use of 500 GB Hard Drives.
Xserve G5 models before April 2005 shipped with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther", after April 2005 shipped with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger".
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