Is ~100 Mac Minis really all it takes to get into the TOP500 these days?
but for some history fun: https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2003/11/
#3 on the list was "X" https://www.top500.org/system/173225/
Virginia Tech, self made 2,200 core PowerPC 970 as 1100 G5 Macs with Rmax at 10,280.00 GFlops (this is 0.012 PFlops).
... and for some more history about the Cray vs modern computers... http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/Cray%201%20Supercomputer%20P...
“In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1.” This refers to official average geometric mean results.
It debuted in 2020 at #130 with Max at 2.66 PFlops.
A M4Pro mini today benches at 8.520 TFlops https://www.check-mac.com/en/product_benchmark-apple_mac_min...
From the article, the minis they are using:
... the developers can orchestrate the 64 active processing cores into a combined 1.3 teraflops of performance in their most recent tests.
... however it would only take about 300 Mac M4Pro minis to get to the 500th spot today.