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First 3D Simulations of Complete Nuclear Detonations

Posted by michael on from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

jhiv writes: "The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) reports that 'Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories have completed the first full-system three-dimensional simulations of a nuclear weapon's explosion'. The simulations are two of the largest computer simulations ever attempted, each taking weeks to complete on the ASCI White supercomputer. The Los Alamos team used the ASCI Blue Mountain supercomputer to visualize the results. Additional coverage can be found in this story in the Albuquerque Journal."

5 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    First lets figure out how many times faster this computer is.

    One of them they gave statistics that it did the work of 750 years worth of computer time in 39 days.
    First lets figure out how many days there are in 750 years
    750*365.25(accounting for leap year) ~= 273937

    Thats 273,937 days in 750 years (give or take a couple of weeks)

    Now 273,937 / 39 gives us are actual ratio which is a factor of 7024.
    This means that the los Alsomething is 7024 times as fast.

    Now a typical computer now a days can run quake 3 at around an average fps of 60.
    7024 * 60 gives us the fps of the super computer.

    Which is a grand total of 421,422 FPS!!!!

    My only question... When can I buy one?

  2. Hmmm... by andyring · · Score: 2, Funny

    Those computers are extremely cool (I want one!), and hey, if they do the job without having to blow things up, it works for me. But, how long until some Microsoft salesweasel comes along and tries to convince them to run NT on it? Brings new meaning to your computer bombing....

  3. Super computer wars! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Lets just end war all together and just fight our battles on our super computers. Whoever can make the render the biggest atomic explosion the fastest wins!

    Oh wait.. thats "US" :)

  4. addendum... by Loki_1929 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Several hours later it was discovered that the software used by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had a slight flaw, and the corrected simulations show that the nuclear explosions were in fact beige.

    In a related story, the updated software was found to contain massive amounts of spyware.

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  5. Slightly OT... is Slashdot supposed to pay $50? by DoctorYoshi · · Score: 2, Funny
    As I was reading the details to this story on ABQJournal, I saw this odd link on the bottom of the page.

    (PRC# 3.4676.620668)

    Wondering what a PRC article was, I followed it, only to discover various ways I couly pay to use this article.

    One of the options is "HTML Link : Publisher's permission to link to an article." and they charge $50 for this privledge. Apparently this whole scheme is managed by iCopyright.com

    I thought there was some legal precedence in the past allowing deep linking. What happened?