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I just downloaded the 300dpi JPEG. It's pretty sweet! You really can see all those pixels in that image if you look at your monitor close enough! :)

K45

While your point is well taken, another major advantage of LCD displays (other than the space savings as noted by another poster) is the power and cooling savings. Fred Cohen had his students in the CCD do a power and heat analysis of all their equiptment in the wake of the CA power crisis. They found that a 17" LCD monitor only drew 1/10 the power and generated 1/4 the heat of a 17" CRT monitor meaning that the higher cost for the LCD monitor would pay for itself after just a couple years of use.

-"Zow"

Although this sounds good for Linux, now in the number 2 most powerful computer in the world. Another sign that Linux is on the rise and not "dead"

I don't see a reference to Linux in the description of this supercomputer. I see the following link to the specs which describes the OS as:

The operating system used for the Service, I/O, and System Partitions is Intel's distributed version of UNIX (POSIX 1003.1 and XPG3, AT&T System V.3 and 4.3 BSD Reno VFS) developed for the Paragon XP/S Supercomputer. The Paragon OS presents a single system image to the user. This means that users see the system as a single UNIX machine despite the fact that the operating system is running on a distributed collection of nodes.
As much as I like to push Linux (I use it as my desktop) it just isn't correct to say it is in the #2 in the top 500 list.

Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition

http://www.me.berkeley.edu/~mctai/hcci.html
http://www.ca.sandia.gov/CRF/03_facilities/03_FacH CCI-SCCI.html
http://www.vok.lth.se/CE/research/hcci/i_HCCI_uk.h tml

• Distributed Lock Manager: locks can be simulated with certain types of MPI messages.
• Cluster-wide File System: use MPI to pass data back and forth between nodes, including instructions on where to write the data. Not only is there a cluster-wide file system, it's a customizeable cluster-wide file system!
• Process control: Scyld's bproc allows all processes to appear as if they are running on the master node. You can also move processes between nodes transparently with this.
• Connection manager: Scyld provides this to some degree. You can do remote shutdown/startup of nodes or groups of nodes.
• Shared System Disk: well, nodes bootstrap from thier own drives, but download a new kernal image from the master node on bootup. They also pull down libraries from the masternode on bootup.
• Single security and management domain: permissions are the same on the slave nodes as they are on the master. But the slave nodes are truely compute nodes, and permissions there matter little, except for data files.
• Cluster wide process control: you said it. Beowulfs do it.
• Mixed Architecture: what you can do depends on your cluster. For a mixed Mac/Alpha/x86 cluster, you'd have to have different executables for each node. I'm sure there's Beowulf software that lets you do this, but for ours we don't need it (all Athlons.)
• Rolling Upgrade Support: yup. Acually, with Scyld, if you reboot a node, it will come back up with the newest configuration, imaged off the master node.
• Parallel IO support: simulated/managed through MPI pretty easily. Set up "IO" nodes and let them handle it.
• Interconnect failover: networking on a Beowulf is up to you. We use a high-performance switch and some channel bonding. It can be done.
• High-end scaling: Beowulf? "OK?" Have you ever heard of ASCI-Red?
• Load Balancing: ours does round robin scheduling of jobs, but it usually doesn't utilize the higher number nodes unless you run a job that requests a large number of nodes. We wish for better control, but this works pretty well.
• Cluster Alias: yeah, what you said. :)

Not a direct link I'm afraid, but check out the "realated sites" on JESS which is an experts system shell. There were some agent pages there.

Also for basic stuff you might want to check some pages about general agent programming from an AI standpoint.

yes encryption IS a good thing for people like NIST to put resources into. You need people at the top of the field, and it helps that the organization's interests fall right in line with having an open, secure encryption system.

Sandia researchers develop world's fastest encryptor

ORNL Helps Develop Electronic Notebooks (read article to see crypto stuff)

GRIP -- Gigabit Rate IPSec (Army)

Cancer research (I never knew cancer genes needed encryption)

WING (DARPA)

NASA (why can't they look to NIST?)

Key Agile ATM (DARPA)

And theres a slew more. I agree that government should promote better standards, but instead of spending X millions on a bunch of bs, they should look to consolidate it all, which is what my main post should've stated I guess. Some of this so called research, or development never even sees the light of day due to timing situations. One part of government may intend to develop and deploy something, but it won't always happen, meaning all that money used for those projects are now gone, and they're left to ask for more money for some new project, never using their own resources to see if another agency can assist them.

Hate to reply to myself:

DOEs Concentrating Solar Power Program

More info on Solar 2

Hmm, maybe it is still operating, and I haven't passed by on the right days?

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

Some people have asked why we don't generate energy with one of those things. Well, we don't use a single parabolic mirror, because it is hard to build a very large one. Instead, we use multiple mirrors all angled toward a focal point, like this:

Solar Power Tower

While the website says that it is in use, the last few times I have driven by on (on my way to my parents house in Bako), it hasn't been exceptionally bright. I remember it in the late 80's, early 90's, the top of the tower looked like it was white hot (at the focus), and when they would move the mirrors away, above the tower, you could "see" a spot of "boiling" air - it looked like the wavyness you see rippling off a hot car, from the heat refraction, but hovering at a point in mid-air. Very impressive shit.

That's not all, though - want to build such a device yourself, for cooking perhaps? Check this...

Still not enough? Want to build a "real" solar furnace?

Go here!

Have fun, and don't burn yourself!

Worldcom - Generation Duh!

I found this:

"Recently there has been increased emphasis on radiation effects in space due to an increasing number of satellite launches for commercial and defense systems. The natural space environment can damage electronics because of total-ionizing-dose and single-event effects (SEE). These are caused by the high energy electrons, protons, and heavy ions that are intrinsic to the space environment due to cosmic rays and the Earth's radiation belts. SEE due to cosmic rays and high-energy protons can lead to hard or soft errors in many types of devices and ICs. SEE are even possible in avionics and ground applications of advanced microelectronics with submicron feature sizes. SEE can cause failure at any point during a system's lifetime due to one inopportune particle strike, if circuits and systems are not suitably designed, tested, and built. Total dose effects accumulate over a system's lifetime, and can lead to premature performance degradation and system failure."

There are some interesting links on this at the Sandia Labs website here. Some of these go to sites that are a bit encyclopedic.

This is true weirdness from the article (link added):

Over the past year, Assistant Professor Weija Wen has created a white powder of tiny particles that, when combined with oil, can be either a fluid or a solid. It changes its state when an electrical charge is applied or removed, a property known as electrorheology". Wen's is not the first substance that can do this, but the molecular properties of Wen's particles make this fluid much more rigid than those that have gone before, he said. For instance, it exceeds the rigidity standard set by General Motors Corp. for use in a clutch, which the auto maker has been researching for more than ten years.

In a car, such a clutch might last longer than a mechanical one, Wen said. In a small hard-disk drive, such as for a handheld device, it could remove the need to make tiny, expensive gears and clutches. If used to replace existing parts, the technology could be commercialized in just two or three years, he estimated.

I don't know, I have visions of someone zapping the car, and watching it melt around me as I fly down the pavement at unhealthy speeds.

You know, I worked out by Sandia for a while and the type of people there are not hip leet computer builders who want to make this thing for the same reason people climb Everest and real investigative science happens.

They want the government to determine the course of genetic research, or at least the course of the distribution of information produced by genome research.

They don't care about the petaflop. Petaflops will be designed in many forms. And one that takes this many processors is not industrially replicable, anyway. So Compaq gets some advanced r&d but very little salable out of this collaboration.

This may be out of your price range, but Sandia Labs has a nice little machine they call the Cplant (Computational Plant). Its a cluster of about 500 linux boxes with supercomputer power. Its ranked 84th in the list of TOP500 Supercomputers in the world as of November 3rd.

This may be out of your price range, but Sandia Labs has a nice little machine they call the Cplant (Computational Plant). Its a cluster of about 500 linux boxes with supercomputer power. Its ranked 84th in the list of TOP500 Supercomputers in the world as of November 3rd.

Speaking of High Availability clusters, , check out this site

I'm also quite keen on clustering, so when I'm back at my PC I'll rummage through my bookmarks and post some more links...

Off the top of my head, I also remember Cplant...

Then, there is Plan 9... Do check out their "Related Links" section!

Trian

The U.S. National Labs offer lots of internships/positions for computer scientists involving Linux or Unix. Here is an incomplete set links for the curious:

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Sandia National Laboratory
• Sandia's California site
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Argonne National Laboratory

The U.S. National Labs offer lots of internships/positions for computer scientists involving Linux or Unix. Here is an incomplete set links for the curious:

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Sandia National Laboratory
• Sandia's California site
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Argonne National Laboratory

Thank you, Mo, finally a voice of reason. (And to answer your question, it was probably around 250,000.) Notable example: Dr. Fred Cohen, who works at the Sandia National Laboratories, is very likely in possession of classification levels whose very names are classified, and is also one of the most outspoken critics of Carnivore and the FBI in general.

Once again, Slashdot showing the fact that just because you have a forum doesn't make you an expert in, well... anything. (I don't claim to be one either for that matter, just an informed amateur.)

But its definately not the same system as the new 12,000 cpu 30 TeraOp ASCI EV68-based dream machine.

Now what would be _cool_ is if during checkout someone were to try out 2.4.0-test103 and find out that it actually outperforms Tru64 for certain classes of problems.

The reference to 2.4.0-test103 is based on the rate of test kernels, and the projected delivery time of this new machine. I hope that 2.4.0 final is available much sooner than that.

No, I'm not denying that the end of Moore's law is inevitable given current production techniques and circuit technology, rather I'm saying that there will be new developments which will allow us to continue using the same basic model of circuitry without going to a radically different architecture, such as quantum computing.

See this article for an example of a component which rather than being hampered by quantum effects, instead relies on them to work. There are other similar efforts underway, I think IBM are working on similar projects, and I think that by the time Moore's law ends we'll have the basis for a new kind of electronic circuit based on the same general principles, but different component architectures.

Mmm, quantum mechanics isn't guaranteed to keep us from continuing to shrink circuitry. For one thing, quantum mechanics is probabilistic. It's unpredictable in that you can't know what, say, one particle is exactly going to do, but you can know the statistics well enough to know what thousands of particles will do.

The problems is that current circuitry is not designed with quantum mechanical effects in mind. You need something like the quantum mechanical transistor that a lot of people are working on, including a research team at Sandia National Labs -- devices which are designed with QM effects in mind, and are optimized to take advantage of those effects.

Sargent

can be found here. These guys are somewhat more sophisticated than your average script kiddie.

Intel made a supercomputer, the Paragon I believe, which used 386 processors.

It's not a great leap from MPP to partitioning

The S/390's partitioning/VM scheme kicks serious ass, but the CPUs and architecture are more than adequate to handle the overhead - x86 CPUs would slow to a crawl.

For reference, the standard disclaimer for a National Lab's web site can be found at Sandia National Labs Web Disclaimer

I work at a DOE installation also. Their lawyers are VERY highly paid, and unfortunately, they have the Supreme Court on their side. You don't own those computers, they do. They can (and DO) do anything they want.

As a side note, our local DOE folks also monitor your web surfing, and log ALL your page requests. They also block any https:// connections, as well requests to sites on their "Evil waste of time" list, and they grep through their logs once a week searching for "keywords" ( sexy, pussy, xxx, porn, pr0n, etc). You basically have no rights to privacy since it is their equipment, not yours.

As a side note, we all just got email saying that all of our phone calls were logged, and that we could be expecting visits from our management about some of the more questionable phone calls. (In other words, more than a few local calls a day, and any long distance calls.)

As a side note, all businesses have these rights, but most choose not to exercise them.

Deal with it, or leave. The labs ARE NOT,
WILL NOT,
CAN NOT
be part of the real world.

You can get an exhaustive search of a tree without searching every node in the tree. Pruning techniques can remove many, many orders of magnitude from the amount of nodes that need to be search.

Have a look at Branch and Bound for example.

I have implemented a circuit partitioning engine using branch and bound that only searched 1% of the possible partitionings, and was still guaranteed to come up with the same solution you get with a real exhaustive search. This was with very small circuits; the larger the circuit, the smaller proportion of the nodes need be searched.

So, the raw number of possible games is not really an issue, even if you want to do the equivalent of an exhaustive search. If there happens to be a good pruning technique, the number of nodes in the tree becomes almost irrelevant. Branch and Bound may not work for Chess, but perhaps another technique would make the problem solvable by current technology.

--
Patrick Doyle

Sandia National Labs was tagged to do the hardening for the Pentium series of chips, though I don't know where they stand with it.

see www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN1 2-18-98/intel_story.htm

There or those really curious I suggest a trip to google search for "radiation hardened pentium"

-MS2k

Pretty cool. Just like finding bucky tubes in chimney soot.

The Sandia National Laboratory is currently preparing the Pentium for use in high radiation environments such as space, for more information check out the following sites
http://www.sandia.gov/media/rhp.htm
http://www.sandia.gov/LabN ews/LN12-18-98/intel_story.htm

The Sandia National Laboratory is currently preparing the Pentium for use in high radiation environments such as space, for more information check out the following sites
http://www.sandia.gov/media/rhp.htm
http://www.sandia.gov/LabN ews/LN12-18-98/intel_story.htm

What they dont tell you is that there will still be the same radioactive waste that so scared you with Fission.

So we'll be able to take remodel a fusion or fission reactor, dump all the radioactive stuff into the transmuter, and get non-radioactive stuff. Sure, some of the radioactive iron may no longer be the same iron isotope or may no longer be iron, but it can be separated and processed using ordinary chemical and manufacturing methods at that point.

We're already doing transmuting in the lab but energy is too expensive to do it routinely. But then we're talking about after energy is cheap...and the high-energy plasma available as a side effect of hot fusion will allow interesting engineering and manufacturing.

In July, Sandia explained this same liquified fusion reactor module design on this web page. Includes diagrams and details of this interesting bit of engineering.

There is a summary of where we are with pulsed power engineering. Notice we're already at the point where we can take apart non-nuclear waste into its components, which allows detoxification and recycling.

There's other info about the Z-pinch methods elsewhere, if you're interested in nuclear engineering.

In July, Sandia explained this same liquified fusion reactor module design on this web page. Includes diagrams and details of this interesting bit of engineering.

There is a summary of where we are with pulsed power engineering. Notice we're already at the point where we can take apart non-nuclear waste into its components, which allows detoxification and recycling.

There's other info about the Z-pinch methods elsewhere, if you're interested in nuclear engineering.

The CPlant isn't a Beowulf machine. It is running linux tho.

Granted there's lots of bureacratic red tape involved, but the govt. supercomputers are available for academic research as well as running ... whatever it is they run. Get an account and let us know!

ASCI Red specs

ASCI Red FAQ

The real action is lower down Avalon was top 100 now is down to 265. The top cluster goes to cplant take the award for top cluster now.

Just add the transistors and the dream of powerful (like ~286/386 powered, or at least dragonball(palm v)) smart dust will be a reality. (or smart cereal, just think, your daily internal diagnostic exam could happen over breakfast)

Hold on folks, this isn't necessarily a beowulf. I could not find the word "Beowulf" on the HPTi page. (Maybe I didn't look hard enough though).

Not every Linux cluster is a Beowulf. The fastest alpha Linux cluster in existence is not a Beowulf.

Anyone know what they plan to use?

Sure, the 9500-processor Intel monster at Sandia is the fastest, but there is an alpha linux cluster on the top 500 supercomputer list. As of 4-Aug-1999 it was ranked 129/500, and consisted of 150 Alpha processors. Read more about it at the Sandia Web Page. Note -- it is NOT a Beowulf. I don't know enough about the MPI implementation on either, but I think your comment about it being slow is dead-on. Those foreign baddies will have to go for more coffee breaks.

To be perfectly blunt, to implement Exchange like that would be *INSANE*.

First of all, suggesting to implement an NT solution for an organization of that size is already tempting your job security, but to actually do it?

Assuming standard users and needs for this system, I can only recommend using a Lotus Notes/Domino system. If you've got the cash, there is simply no better solution out there, or even close.

Run Domino (the server end of Notes) on several UNIX servers. Solaris (SPARC and x86), AIX, and HP/UX are all supported, with a Linux port (Caldera 2.3 (currently in beta) and Red Hat 6.0 will be supported, as well as SuSE 6.1 and Pacific HiTech) on it's way Q4 99 per DevCon.

Notes has got all you'll ever need, and R5 simply blows away anything M$ has out there. You've got to pay for seats with Notes, but to tell you the truth, Exchange is free, and you get less than you pay for.

Plus, your users can run the Notes client on any Win32 they think is prettiest (please tell me you'll use NT and not 9x on the client end).

Look at this for a guy in your situation who had to deal with Exchange.

Some other really good links are here, here, and here:

http://www.notes.net/50beta.nsf/7d6a87824e2f0976 8525655b0050f2f2/35BEC3BF6D717A3F852567120 07A435A?OpenDocument
(problem with the last one, copy it and cut out the space that is stuck between the zero's, the href tag keeps putting it in! It is a great article though : )

(TIP: Show the guys with the money those links so they know why you should use a Domino/Notes solution.)

I have poked around with jess. It's sort of based on CLIPS, and is programmable in lisp-like syntax. It also has hooks that allow you to extend it in Java or even call Java from within you Jess programs.

Mentioned in the article is a " supercomputer" of NT machines (hey!! stop those chuckles). There are 72 dual PII Compaq Proliants in this thing (Didn't see any clock speeds or amount of RAM or type of network, other than their use of ServerNet software). It can sort 1TB in under 50 minutes. They state that the previous record (for a shared mem. super. rather than a cluster) was 2.5 hours. Hmmm... dare I say... CHALLENGE!!!).

Phenym