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Weather is inherently unpredictable; Sacramento, CA (where I live) has already had more rainfall since December 1 than all of last year. El Nino events are even less predictable than "average" weather is. Meteorologists are only beginning to understand the underlying patterns of an El Nino. Is this going to be an El Nino year? I wouldn't place bets either way. The Japanese have a word, "modoki", which means "the same, only different". At least one prediction is for an "El Nino Modoki".

http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc...

The NASA report today (based on data collected earlier in the year) says that California would need 11 TRILLION gallons of rain to make up for the drought. Entirely coincidentally, there was a bit (on the generally-unreliable TV news weather) yesterday that said that this year's rainstorms dropped 10 trillion gallons on the state so far this month. Not all in the right places, of course; parts of Napa County were getting an inch an hour, which is nearly Philippines style rain. The ski resorts in the mountains are rejoicing in a couple of FEET of new snow.

Rubbish. Newer data suggests the sensitivity is much lower, for example here , here and here.

You climate botherers can't have it both ways. Many of you refuse to even accept there's a debate (the science is settled, right?) and accuse sceptics of ignoring the peer reviewed literature. Yet you ignore the peer reviewed literature when it contradicts your opinions.

They're expecting to get more microbes from the sediment at the bottom of the lake. Sediments are comparatively stuffed with nutrients, and the lack of light and cold aren't much of a problem (there is probably stuff growing at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, just very slowly).

Notice that they're meteorologists. In other words, they study short term trends and don't have PhD-level understanding of ensemble averages and other techniques necessary to analyze long term trends. (Heck, they're TV personalities. They might not know more than how to wave their hands around a green screen.)

But sqrt(2) is right to say that most scientists agree that anthropogenic CO2 is causing a dangerous temperature increase. The percentage of scientists who agree with this statement increases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field.

Thanks for that comment. It inspired me to post a snippet of a similar conversation I had months ago, with your links and some others added:

Is it right, however, to lump together those who are skeptical of evolution with those who are skeptical of AGW, particularly CO2-driven AGW ?

Creationists confuse religious faith with falsifiable science. Among the general public, climate-change contrarians (and your average Greenpeace/PETA loony) confuse political affiliation with falsifiable science. In both cases, scientists are much less likely to agree with either claim, and that likelihood decreases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field. That's probably why both groups tend to accuse the scientific community of conspiracy and/or widespread incompetence.

At my blog, the following statement is both legible and has popup titles describing why that link was chosen. Here it is without the links first: "And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational levels."

And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational lev els.

The sort of idiot who knows that the "extensive study" you talk of is, to put it mildly, immature

And you know that from reading a whopping zero papers on the subject. Come back when you know what you're talking about.

Your view, that we know all we need to know already to make 50 year predictions, is idiotic.

That's just the tiniest fraction of the data used. Of course, no surprise that you'd make that argument, since you've read a whopping zero papers on the subject. Come back when you know what you're talking about.

Would you have the same confidence in an economic model as you have in these climate models?

Yes, if it had as much study and peer review behind it.

Oh yes it is, you're making the assumption that peer review is some guarantee of correctness.

I'm making the assumption that it's infinitely better than a slashdotter whose read no papers on the subject talking out their arse.

If you've read the Wegman report, you'll know what I'm talking about.

You mean a non-peer-reviewed report? Cute. Keep avoiding peer review. It shows what you think of science.

And, FYI, I have read it. And, FYI, fixing of the errors reported by the Wegman report doesn't change the shape of the reconstruction. And, FYI, that's about one single paper out of many thousands. Including many more on the exact same topic using different methodologies that reach the exact same conclusion (the most recent, for example, is "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia"):

Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.

But no surprise you'd conflate a single, now obsolete paper to somehow be the keystone of all of climate science. On, and one more FYI: if you read the original paper, it's actually all about the uncertainty levels at different points in time.

While we are often told about the "2,500 scientists" who contributed to the latest IPCC report, the vast majority of these contributors had no influence on the conclusions expressed by the IPCC and were not asked if they endorsed those conclusions

Would you like polls, then? How's this? According to polls, more climate scientists think the IPCC was too lax with their conclusions than too harsh, 97% of climate scientists say that temperatures have risen, and 97% think humans are responsible.

Its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) are produced by a small group of scientists and are revised and agreed to, line-by-line, by representatives of member governments before they are made public (McKitrick 2007).

You know, you could at least not

See also: Indian Ocean Dipole.

It's been stuck in the "positive" phase for 3 seasons, which is unprecedented in recent history (past ~100y). The positive phase seems to correspond with warmer western Indian Ocean water. Effects of this phase are stronger monsoons on the Indian subcontinent and deeper droughts in the east.

Here is the site maintained by the team who first described the phenomenon in 1999. It has since been evidenced by historical observations this century and examination of fossil coral. BBC article seems to suggest that there are skeptics in climatology, but I think it's misleading; its existence is non-controversial, only its influence when compared to the ENSO is questioned.

Here is news from UNSW, and here is the abstract of the paper that the popular press is referring to.

And to put that further into perspective, from a quick Google, the current record holder was the Japanese The Shinkai 6500 With a maximum recorded depth of 6,527m.

It's still got a few K's to go.

To quote a collegue of mine "The interconnect IS the machine!"

The primary difference between a supercomputer and a cluster is the degree of itegration between the computing elements. You can demand that a Supercomputer MUST have a crossbar switch or similar close coupled interconnection method but that only scales so far. For a good example have a look at the earth simulator, you're not telling me THAT is not a supercomputer ? The XT3 is similar in that it has a customised high bandwidth, low latency interconnect it just doesn't have the SMP elements that the earth simulator has.

As an aside Cray get a LOT of contracts that we never hear about . They are actually financially fairly healthy.

It's good to look for sources, thanks for asking. Please give yours also.

Here's a good general discussion responding to questions from one modeler to another:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /10/modeller-vs-modeller/

Other relevant threads for your question -- a few in a quick grab-bag -- include:

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2006/05/model_projec tions_of_the_north.php

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /03/catastrophic-sea-level-rise-more-evidence-from -the-ice-sheets/

http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan /

One of the fundamental predictions made 10 years ago by modeling that has been borne out in measurement is discussed here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /01/polar-amplification/

Most of the statements you make deserve footnotes, if you'll tell us where you got those ideas. It's very helpful to understand where these ideas come from -- not uncommonly, they can be traced back to websites of PR industry pages funded by industries trying to deny scientific work can be relied on (see the tobacco papers generally for fifty years of such material).

Your basic idea that science starts only from observation, for example -- who says that and where? Why do you believe it's the only way science can be done? Do none of the scientists you personally know -- ask them! -- first think about things, then go look to see if they can disprove ("falsify") what they imagined might be true? Those I know work that way routinely.

Science moves by self-correction. One example here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2006/05/the_von_s_af fair.php

Most of the questions you pose are in the 'can be looked up' realm; I'm just a reader of the science like you are, not a climate researcher myself. I recommend the reading. The books reviewed here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /05/my-review-of-books/
may be helpful (all have extensive footnotes that can be looked up, most of the references are online).

What useful science has the "Earth Simulator" produced?

You might try reading The Journal of the Earth Simulator.

Or perhaps this summary of 2003 research

The 2005 projects are listed here

What useful science has the "Earth Simulator" produced?

You might try reading The Journal of the Earth Simulator.

Or perhaps this summary of 2003 research

The 2005 projects are listed here

What useful science has the "Earth Simulator" produced?

You might try reading The Journal of the Earth Simulator.

Or perhaps this summary of 2003 research

The 2005 projects are listed here

The man believes so much in what he says that he offered to bet any other climatologists (most who have far less money than he, since he is being backed by Big Oil with $2500/day speaking fees), but would only bet if the odds were weighted more than 50:1 in his favor (he originally insisted on 100:1).

But disregard that. What does starting a congressional inquisition into these scientists have to do with one man's crusade against all others in his field? While I differ with Lindzen, he is at least doing it right. The congressman is simply trying to harass these scientists into being quiet.

Ummm... I think BlueGene (here and here) is cooler than the Earth Simulator (here).

I found it odd that there aren't any pics of the machine on those sites, so I looked around... Here are some pics of the prototype at top, and the finished version at bottom. It looks like it's going to be in classic "IBM black", like the 2001 monolith : )

Some more pics of the prototype.

For comparison, the Earth simulator and big mac.

Anyone know what kind of facilities blue gene will be housed at? The one for the earth simulator looks like something out of a movie, IBM better be able to compete on the 'cool factor'. : )

And does anyone else get the warm and fuzzy feelings from looking at these pics, even though there's nothing you could possibly use that much power for? Ahhh, power...

observations
Theres some interesting observational research, Oscillations and Chaos in Ant Societies, R.V. Sole, O. Miramontes, and B.C. Goodwin, J. Theor. Biol. 161, pp.343-357, 1993.

In David Suzuki's, The Sacred Balance, Brian Goodwin (author also of, HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED ITS SPOTS) made some interesting observational discoveries with ants. Synchronous emergent behaviour arose when individual *chaotic* ants reached a certain density. Goodwin concluded that ...

• ... living near the edge of chaos gives systems, the complex systems, maximal adaptability, the capacity to respond adaptively to a constantly changing and unpredictable world ... Brian Goodwin, The Sacred Balance, Episode 1, Journey into New Worlds.

simulation
You can see a simulation of the ants behaviour begin modeled here. You can find more about cellular automata and ants by Akira Kageyama. The source code (java) is here.

limitations
But there are limitations in trying to model living systems with computers. Some things just happen in nature that cannot be modelled. I remember reading Bart Kosko (Fuzzy thinking) and in it he describes how modelling animals nature for example doesn't take into account things like breaking bones. Sure you could assign probability of a bone breaking, describe the forces on the bone when it breaks. But in nature it just happens.

observations
Theres some interesting observational research, Oscillations and Chaos in Ant Societies, R.V. Sole, O. Miramontes, and B.C. Goodwin, J. Theor. Biol. 161, pp.343-357, 1993.

In David Suzuki's, The Sacred Balance, Brian Goodwin (author also of, HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED ITS SPOTS) made some interesting observational discoveries with ants. Synchronous emergent behaviour arose when individual *chaotic* ants reached a certain density. Goodwin concluded that ...

• ... living near the edge of chaos gives systems, the complex systems, maximal adaptability, the capacity to respond adaptively to a constantly changing and unpredictable world ... Brian Goodwin, The Sacred Balance, Episode 1, Journey into New Worlds.

simulation
You can see a simulation of the ants behaviour begin modeled here. You can find more about cellular automata and ants by Akira Kageyama. The source code (java) is here.

limitations
But there are limitations in trying to model living systems with computers. Some things just happen in nature that cannot be modelled. I remember reading Bart Kosko (Fuzzy thinking) and in it he describes how modelling animals nature for example doesn't take into account things like breaking bones. Sure you could assign probability of a bone breaking, describe the forces on the bone when it breaks. But in nature it just happens.

The vast majority of clusters are for simulating very complex systems that require lots and lots of calculations.

You can get a few hints by looking just at their names.

The number one "Earth Simulator Centre" is fairly self-explanatory, going to their website show they create a variety of models for things such as weather, tectonic plate movement, etc.

The number 3 LANL supercomputer "is a key part of DOE's plan to simulate nuclear weapons tests in the absence of actual explosions. The more powerful computers are designed to model explosions in three dimensions, a far more complex task than the two-dimensional models used in weapons design years ago." I imagine that most US government simulations would be doing something simmilar.

The bluegene may be faster, but the Earth Simulator sure looks cooler. Obviously, this proves that the Earth Simulator is the superior (superer?) computer.

I feel it's worth mentioning that if you look at the Earth Simulator's event calendar, you can see the Earth Simulator was tested and working in April of 2002. It's amazing it has taken so long for someone to beat their Linpack score... Two years is an eternity in the computing world. Good job NEC, you had a great run!

Yeah, the Earth Simulator http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/ does try to do this, however it does a vast number of other things as well. The other systems focus on more specific incident (such as Ivan), thus more computing power is aim'd at a short-term problem.

Earth Simulator does - Atmosphere & Ocean Simulation, Solid Earth Simulation, Multiscale Simulation, and Advanced Precipitation Simulations. (And other cooperative projects).

It's an impressive machine. 640 nodes, each of which is an 8-CPU shared memory multiprocessor. The unusual feature is that the machines are interconnected not by a network, but by a brute-force 640 x 640 crossbar switch. Each data path has 12.3GB/s, and 640x2 paths can be going at once. 83,000 separate cables. Aggregate bandwidth about 8TB/s.

It's a reasonable way to make a one-off machine, but a dead end as a commercial product.

According to top 500 supercomputers 35 TFLOPS would put it ino second place after Earth simulation center - 35-40 TFLOPS

here Curious, /. keeps putting a space between the r and t in report.. i.e. repor t.html

Yeah, they're very nice, but THIS is the UNIX-nerd's dream machine!

I was actually surprised about how much the scientific community knows about the history of climate change, and how little it knows about the future of climate change...

sounds like we need a whole bunch of Earth Simulators asap!

Clicky clicky

Top 500

Cornell

NEC Earth Simulator

That would be the Earth Simulator in Japan.

Their English pamphlet states that it's a simulator of the environment on the Earth, and that it's used to predict the effects of some events on the global environment.

The article says that they used ttcp which is a memory-to-memory bandwidth testing program. Most would consider that unrepresentative of reality. On the other hand, today's supercomputers have a tremendous amount of memory (1.2 TB, 6 TB, 10 TB, 33 TB, etc.) so memory to memory is possible.

Others have suggested that disk speeds cannot sustain that rate. However, supercomputer disk arrays can easily keep up (4 GB/s or 32 Gb/s).

Finally, it is possible to achieve nearly the same result (multiple streams instead of a single stream) transfering real data (23.23 Gb/s).

[Bias alert: I am a member of the team that set a previous Internet2 Land Speed Record, Guinness World Record and won the "Bandwidth Lust: Distributed Particle Physics Analysis Using Ultra-High Speed TCP on The Grid" or "Moore's law move over" award at SC2003.]

Now, before you complain that the technology is not available to "mere mortals," let me point out that we first started experimenting with 1 Gb/s Ethernet at work 5 years ago. Now it is readily available at reasonable prices for consumer desktop machines. (Apple has had it standard in G4 desktops for 4 years.) The problem is not with consumer hardware, it is having access to true broadband (not cable modem or DSL), at least in the USA. Although your LAN may support 1 Gb/s, your download speed is limited to 1-3 Mb/s (cable) or 256 -786 Kb/s (DSL). (Your upload speeds are significantly lower.) Since the link provider has very little incentive to upgrade service, I doubt that will change very quickly.

So, yes it is possible. No you can't have it (yet)!

I actually don't care too much for special FX (but the one's rendered in RealTime on my machine ;) or LOTR actually..

(I hope this wont modded 'not geeky' but I saw the first movie and it sortof pissed me off to have to wait for the next movies, which weren't yet released so I decided to not "go there again", and waste money on incomplete movies.. but that's another topic)


It seems kindof a waste to have the 3th 'biggest' computer working for media.
It's actually scary to have the 3th biggest computer 'be in control' of what most of the ppl will see.

(what if that machine becomes aware.. and using images to brainwash or manipulate the .. oh network-tv already did that..)


But can someone give some insight on the "Japanese Earth Simulator" they mention?
I think they have a webpage here but it's very first thing I hear about the project...

Although accurate software models of the earth's climate and weather conditions don't exist. There is certainly the hardware to run it. The worlds most powerful supercomputer the Earth Simulator is designed to be able to accurately model the earth. Hopefully advances in software modelling will enable us to actually make good use of all that raw processing power.

While I certainly disagree that you can't build a very high performance computer out a cluster of computers (Linux or otherwise), there is a lot of merit to the fact that clusters just don't scale well for certain classes of applications. Hence the renaissance of the vector supercomputer (ala the Earth Simulator ).

Obviously, this guy is plugging the new Cray X1 architecture, which really is quite promising. For instance, check out this paper by some folks at Oak Ridge National Lab that appeared in Supercomputing 2003.

Of course, since this is Slashdot, I expect that there will be a deluge of posts decrying everything about the new Cray machine because it commits the cardinal sin of NOT USING LINUX. Oh, the horror!

The interesting "deterministic chaotic systems" are those that arise from the interaction of nonlinear equations (nonlinear does not mean simply "a line", but that two solutions do not necessarily add together to create a third solution. Sound or ocean waves are examples of linear functions. Add two waves together and you get another wave). These nonlinear systems exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions; small deviations lead to substantially different outcomes. The "butterly effect" if you will.

If complex systems (such as the weather) were dependant on human perception for their inscrutability, today's hyper-precise measuring and simulation systems would be cranking out perfect month-forward forecasts! It's the fact that you must have perfect, complete data to precisely determine future outcomes that makes chaotic systems so intriguing.

jaz

That Blue Gene/L machine being shown is only a small part of the full machine they are building for LLNL. When its complete, IBM estimates that it will run at 360 TFLOPS, at a fraction of the size and power consumption of the current #1 supercomputer. Even if they miss the mark by 50% it represents a fairly significant leap in processing and power consumption. And hey, since it will only occupy 64 racks, you can just about fit one in your garage! (Nuclear reactor to power it not included...)

Funny when i had been seen the the Headline i thought of this in an an american way...
sarcasm: The americans really have a unique way of solving problems.

Paragraphs, man. They're useful.

Anyway.. no OpenMosix here, this is using MPI. Specifically, on top of DK Panda's MPI libraries, they brought Kazushige Goto in to optimize the BLAS libraries in order to obtain the Top500 ranking of 10+ TF.

Incidentally, the Top500 rankings are based on a standardized LINPACK benchmark and formula, not "raw" processor rankings. I saw another comment that implied the latter.

Other interesting notes:

• With conventional air cooling, the airspeed throughout the facility would have been 60-70MPH+. Try working on a console in a hurricane.
• Dr. Varadarajan is a very very cool guy. He absolutely knows every detail that is going on in this machine, and knows how to make a good story out of it.
• The facility this is in was upgraded to handle 3MW. The current cluster takes around 1.5MW. And you thought your Athlon was hot. :)
• The #1 Top500 machine, the Earth Simulator, not only runs on custom Hitachi vector hardware, but required an entire new building to be built. The facility is a feat in itself, and is a big portion of the cost (for those of you extrapolating cost/performance if it was built at the same time as System X).

Paragraphs, man. They're useful.

Anyway.. no OpenMosix here, this is using MPI. Specifically, on top of DK Panda's MPI libraries, they brought Kazushige Goto in to optimize the BLAS libraries in order to obtain the Top500 ranking of 10+ TF.

Incidentally, the Top500 rankings are based on a standardized LINPACK benchmark and formula, not "raw" processor rankings. I saw another comment that implied the latter.

Other interesting notes:

• With conventional air cooling, the airspeed throughout the facility would have been 60-70MPH+. Try working on a console in a hurricane.
• Dr. Varadarajan is a very very cool guy. He absolutely knows every detail that is going on in this machine, and knows how to make a good story out of it.
• The facility this is in was upgraded to handle 3MW. The current cluster takes around 1.5MW. And you thought your Athlon was hot. :)
• The #1 Top500 machine, the Earth Simulator, not only runs on custom Hitachi vector hardware, but required an entire new building to be built. The facility is a feat in itself, and is a big portion of the cost (for those of you extrapolating cost/performance if it was built at the same time as System X).

Official Site

Short Blurb from Time Magazine


Descriptive Article (with pictures)

Details Regarding its Supercomputer Status

That said, for what is provided, the Earth Simulator seems to be the current king by about 2x. (Corrections appreciated.)

As I've asked before, what will they *do* with it once they've posted their performance benchmarks?

Japan's Earth Simulator will be used for climate studies. What will VT use it for?

Chip H.

Seti@Home already blows away all other supercomputers on the planet

Where did you get this idea? I'd honestly like to know. It's very misinformed.

Take a look to the authorized projects list for 2003 Here.

The conclusion was basically that Japan would be f***'ed if such was to happen, but that's rant for another day.

So, earthsimulator simulates a lot of things. I am surprised that they don't model nuclear blasts on them, because it certainly CAN. Or at least we just don't know about it.

One thing is for sure, though - I will attest that NEC definitely made a bundle over this =)

btw, for ppl who are in japan, you can schedule tours to the place. I havn't tried yet, but in case anyone is interested... (now that I think about it, wasn't there a story about this a while back?) but here is a link just for fun: visitor information.

and if you are brave enough for the same page in japanese, click here. (The japanese page has a japanese map, which shows station names in kanji. I always found kanji station names to be more help, but that might be just me...

The conclusion was basically that Japan would be f***'ed if such was to happen, but that's rant for another day.

So, earthsimulator simulates a lot of things. I am surprised that they don't model nuclear blasts on them, because it certainly CAN. Or at least we just don't know about it.

One thing is for sure, though - I will attest that NEC definitely made a bundle over this =)

btw, for ppl who are in japan, you can schedule tours to the place. I havn't tried yet, but in case anyone is interested... (now that I think about it, wasn't there a story about this a while back?) but here is a link just for fun: visitor information.

and if you are brave enough for the same page in japanese, click here. (The japanese page has a japanese map, which shows station names in kanji. I always found kanji station names to be more help, but that might be just me...

According to Apple, in certain benchmarks, the G5 is faster than the NEC Earth Simulator.

If you'd like to see what these people are up to for yourself, here is a link to their website. Lots of performance data, lists of projects, etc.

The big story should be about the air conditioning system for this baby.

The Earth Simulator in Japan requires is own power plant in an attached building to power the computer and the air conditioning system.

I've been working in the Grid Computing area for the last two and a half years, and would like to make a stand for all of us who aren't just worried about bigger supercomputers.

Supercomputers are great, but the number of big computing problems that can handle being run on distributed groups of supercomputers is small. That's why things such as the Earth Simulator and the ASCI programme still exist - sometimes it's just better to build a bigger box!

Where Grid Computing might take off in the science and business mainstream is collaboration and sharing of resources. In particular, I work on producing middleware to try and share and unify data resources. In the astronomy community for instance, they have spent many years standardising the naming schemes for their databases and as a result, projects such as Skyserver and SkyQuery are becoming possible. Now consider the bioinformatics field: hundreds of competing standards for naming things as simple as gene expression ids. Grid computing should provide some of the tools to make knowledge extraction from the many disparate scientific databases possible.

This has applications in business, and it's something we're already seeing in the uptake of Web Services. One recent Grid Computing initiative - Grid Services - is pushing the boundaries of Web Services, and extending them to standardise functionality such as state and lifetime management which should make them more useful for the kinds of collaborative problems which are cropping up in both business and science.

For instance: a car manufacturer has an agreement with different suppliers of airbags - obviously information exchange must take place to ensure safety of the passengers, but both the car manufacturer and airbag supplier will not necessarily want the other to be able to see all data for their parts, just use it. As suppliers change, the manufacturer must ensure that data is properly traced and expired. This is not much different from scientific collaborations, financial collaborations or even network gaming where we have a huge number of swiftly changing, transient resources.

It is these problems of dynamic collaboration and maintenance of resources that Grid Computing may eventually solve.