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Compaq to Build Alpha Supercomputer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-and-fast dept.

kfarmer@tru64.org writes, "The French Atomic Energy Commission has placed an order for a supercomputer to simulate and analyze nuclear explosions. The supercomputer will use about 2,000 Alpha chips running in the 1.25-GHz range, or about 2,500 chips at the 1-GHz level."

8 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why would you want to do this? by coreman · · Score: 3

    It's not for analyzing, it's for simulation and emulation to verify designs without physical testing. The simultanious equations to do these things are pretty extensive and a hugely parallel processor is very useful. Remember, all the interesting things happen in the first millionth of a second, beyond that it's an expansion/compression issue of the blast propogation.

    Where would this be placed in the current supercomputer ranking?

  2. Why would you want to do this? by Duxup · · Score: 3

    My question is:
    Why would you want to put so much into analyzing nuclear explosions?
    I can see for weapons testing and maybe just out of scientific curiosity. Are there any other reasons anyone can think of?

    1. Re:Why would you want to do this? by MattMann · · Score: 4
      Why would you want to put so much into analyzing nuclear explosions?

      they're trying to find the optimal distances to heat the following foods for a light snack:

      • s'mores
      • toasted marshmallows, straight up
      • mac'n cheese
      • tea, Earl Grey, hot

      the project got kicked off accidently when the French Echelon intercepted and misspelled this decrypt from the American Sec. of Defense: "the best way to heat these foods is unclear". The Spanish intercepted these French intercepts and are still pondering a suspicious code phrase: "noleche".

  3. Re:let's do our math.. by lovebyte · · Score: 3
    We did. In my company, we need computers able to crunch lots of data in very short amount of time. We now have a 16 CPU SGI origin. We are considering going for a beowulf type machine, because for a similar amount of CPU power, the cost is 5 times less (at least).

    I'm wondering if we can get a Beowulf cluster going for a cheaper price with similar speeds.
    These alpha boxen will problably run tru64 in a configuration similar to beowulf, that is a cluster.

    --

    I'll do it for cheesy poofs.

  4. More info by lovebyte · · Score: 3
    More info on the French CEA website: http://www.cea.fr/actu/html/61_1.htm, in French.

    Quick translation:
    ..... The power of 5 teraflops is obtained by the use of the Compaq Alphaserver SC series of supercomputers.....
    The installation of this supercomputer ..... is the first of three steps in the realisation of the nuclear weapon simulation centre. The second step, towards the year 2005, will see an increase to a power of between 30 and 50 teraflops and the last step, 2009, to a machine of about a 100 teraflops.
    .....

    --

    I'll do it for cheesy poofs.

  5. overkill... by eyeball · · Score: 4
    What overkill. I can simulate nuclear blasts in just a few hundred clock cycles:
    main()
    {
    printf("Goodbye, world!\n");
    }

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    _______
    2B1ASK1
  6. Oh, Sparc me! by MattMann · · Score: 4

    Mhz only has any validity as a benchmark within an architecture. To compare across architectures, you must use bogomips!

  7. Oh Spare me. by Amphigory · · Score: 5
    Why do otherwise knowledgeable people persists in using clock speed as a way of rating CPU speed?

    Repeat after me: Mhz only has any validity as a benchmark within an architecture. And even that validity is limited. A 400Mhz PII is NOT 33% faster than a 300Mhz PII. It's maybe 10%. To talk about Ghz Alphas as though they are at all similar to Ghz Intels is crazy.

    You want to share CPU benchmarks on something like this, talk about SPECint and SPECfp. Not Mhz.

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