IBM Constructs New Fastest Computer

scoobysnack writes "MSNBC is reporting that IBM has once again created the world's fastest computer -- it will be used for simulating real-world nuclear tests. With 12 teraflops it would still take it 3 months to simulate the first 1/100th of a second of a nuclear bomb explosion." There's coverage at CNET as well.

Comments

A new record

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

IBM Constructs New Fastest Computer
IBM's ASCII White Super Computer Unleashed

It's CmdrTaco coming down the stretch on New Fastest Computer, but here comes timothy on ASCII White, it's Taco, it's timothy, Taco, timothy....timothy by a nose!
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Compare to all of SETI@home...

[Fross]

to get an idea of the scale of this, the whole SETI@Home project is generating about 8 TeraFLOPS. This thing tops that by about 50%. So it could process about 500000 SETI units per day. or just under six *per second*.

Keywords: Quake 3, Kernel compilation, Beowulf, Toy Story 3 in realtime? :)

Fross

Research is GOOD...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Pretty much anything that adds to the knowledge base is ultimately a GOOD THING(tm). For starters, when you fund a project like this, techies learn HOW to build faster, better, more powerful supercomputers. And it's a research project that'll add to our understanding of atomic physics...

You know, more goes on in a nuclear weapon than fission. If we can properly simulate the beginnings of FUSION, that could be an important step towards commercially viable fusion power plants! Cheap, clean, unlimited energy... worthy goal, I would think.

Additionally, even if the data from this box *IS* indeed ONLY ever applied towards nuclear weapons, that's still MUCH better than the alternative: which is to withdrawl from the Test-Ban Treaty, and start setting the things off for real again.

SIMULATING something is NOT morally equivelent to DOING that very thing. Otherwise, quite a lot of Quake, Carmagaddeon, and GTA players would be sitting in jail right now.

And, hell, even nuclear bombs, as they exist now, and as they could be refined, have potentially non-military uses. No, I'm NOT talking about Teller's harbor in Alaska; or the ridiculous scenarios in Deep Impact or Armagaddeon... Although nukes COULD be used for the noble purpose of deflecting incoming Comets/Asteroids. The implimentation, as presented, just sucked.

Actually, what I'm talking about *WAS* mentioned in Deep Impact. I'm talking about the Orion drive. If we are ever smart enough to withdraw from the ridiculous treaties which prevent it's deployment, Orion could be the answer to all of our short term space exploration problems! Until we perfect fusion, it IS the most powerful drive system proposed for deployment. Imagine how FAST we could get to Mars, and how much equipment we could take along if we used Orion, rathar than ridiculously inefficent chemical rockets!

Or, for the peaceniks out there... Wouldn't that be the ULTIMATE "swords into plowshares" situation? Imagine... the nuclear stockpiles of the world, ultimately directed not towards mutual annihilation, but towards the exploration of the final frontier!

We HAVE the way, all we need is the will.

john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!

Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if

National Status Symbols

[ch-chuck]

These things must be the latest fashion in international peeing contests - It used to be that the US was upset that the USSR had enough missles to blow up the US 20 times over, and we USians could only blow up the USSR 15 times so we (USians) had to make and deploy more missles to acheive 'parity' and get the USSRians back to the negotiating table.

Now-a-days, I guess the US is afraid that China will have better nuke simulators than the US so we gotta beat 'em at it, it's "Keeping up with the Chin's" all over again.

I'd rather see the funds go toward a modern super-collider but, pfft, I only pay 1/3 of my income to taxes, I don't have any real say in how it's going to be spent.

Re:National Status Symbols

[redgren]

Actually, if you ask anyone who is working on these (and I am one of those people - standing in the middle of this monster is just plain cool), it has gone beyond national pissing contest. It is now a corporate pissing contest, and we all know that corporations are bigger than most governments. The US government (taxpayers) funds the competetion, but this is all about IBM beating Sun in the latest round.

IBM Supercomputers

[Blue23]

IBM is really working to keep the top. They've got another one on the drawing board that's a different architecture then this called SMASH (love that name!). It's for "Simple, Many, And Self-Healing".

Here's a link to an article, but's it's a bit dated:
http://www.ibm.com/news/1999/12/06.phtml

=Blue(23)

Nuclear Explosions my arse...

[tringstad]

Dear Citizen,

We have built this giant computer to simulate Nuclear Explosions. Previously, we couldn't predict the outcome of a Nuclear Explosion. We did not know if it would kill a few million people, or a few billion. Until we had the ability to simulate it we couldn't be sure, and if we aren't sure, then we can't protect you. So please continue to send us more tax dollars to support the electric bill for our new Nuclear Explosion Simulator(TM) and we can continue to protect you. Also, it's good for children.

On an unrelated note, please feel free to update your PGP keys to the longest possible key length you can use, we believe you have every right to your privacy.

Yours Truly,
Big Brother

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On a more serious note, how much ass would we kick if we could get this badboy to join Team Slashdot over at distributed.net?

-Tommy

Re:only the government buys top-end computers

[Durinia]

If you're talking about the $100-200 million dollar behemoths like this one, you're right - the government is the only one that can shell out that much for it, and actually use it for something. As a whole though, the supercomputing market is not disappearing. It may not be a quickly growing market, but the buyers are there nonetheless.

There are a lot of industries that use these technologies - major car manufacturers (Ford, GM, etc) use them for their designs, and to do crash test simulations. It actually saves them tons of money in the end - not having to build a bunch of prototypes and running them into walls :). Boeings 777 was actually built straight out of the computer - no mock-up models or anything. Believe it or not, even Disney is actually a big supercomputer customer.

Have you been watching the news about the Human Genome lately? Those companies (and the gov't too) said that high-powered computers accellerated their research by a huge margin. You can bet that our future biotech industry will try to stay ahead by pushing the speeds of simulations.

You're right in that the divisions of the gov't are shelling out for the biggest computers, just don't ignore the business sector so easily. I think the word "fading" is inaccurate - "constant" or possibly "stagnant" might be a better description.

Haiku?

[Tower]

IBM's ASCI
Draws 1 Point 2 Megawatts
The West Coast Goes Dim

Worst name.

[Matt2000]

And my vote for worst processor name in current production: IBM's Power3-III!

Jeez, get some imagination ya nerds.

Hotnutz.com - Funny

Nuclear simulations? Is that it?

[FattMattP]

How come almost every time there is a post about supersomputers, they are being used for nuclear bomb explosion simulations? While I realize that this is a better thing to simulate than to actually do, aren't these computers being used for anything else? Is it that the people who these computers are being built for only want them for those purposes? I just think it would be great to see an announcement mention that a supercomputer would be used for analyzing weather patterns, help with the human genome mapping effort, or something else, well, different. :-)

At least we can run our own weather simulations at home with the Casino-21 project. How long until a distributed nuclear simulation project? I guess that wouldn't happen becuase of "security concerns," though.