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Japan Builds World's Fastest Computer
claylikethemud writes "The New York Times reports that Japan has built the world's most powerful supercomputer from "640 specialized nodes that are in turn composed of 5,104" NEC processors. The machine boasts the computing power equivalent to the 20 fastest American supercomputers combined, and with a top speed of 35.6 teraflops, outpaces the next fastest machine, the ASCI White Pacific, by more than factor of five. Applications include climate modeling, global warming prediction, and other non-weapons research."
So how soon before they'll make them to fit in my pocket?
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
That's what you get for setting off that e-bomb last week.... oh, and don't forget the obligatory: imagine a Beowulf cluster of these posting....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
With all of the supercomputer posts on /. recently, I've seen a lot of talk about the various ASCI projects in the works by IBM and others. No one even mentioned this before. I'm glad to see that someone is building supercomputers for reasons other than nuclear weapons research though.
Yeah right !
Interesting comment from the SJ Mercury
The accomplishment is also a dramatic statement of contrasting scientific and technology priorities in the United States and Japan. The Japanese machine was built to analyze climate change, including global warming, as well as weather and earthquake patterns. The United States has predominantly focused its efforts on building powerful computers for simulating weapons.
Also worth noting is that the article mentions that the US gov't has blocked sales of these machines because they believe that NEC is "dumping" them on the US market - eg selling them below cost. Has there been any WTO action on these restrictions? Wouldn't this be a perfect test case for getting US trade restrictions struck down?
They say "640 specialized nodes that are in turn composed of 5,104" but it cant be 5104 processors each. So each processor is doing 8000mega flops. Why not build a machine with 1 million Celeron processors for 100+ Million instead ?
Applications include climate modeling, global warming prediction, and other non-weapons research.
Ok, it's non-weapon if you think "weather-man". But virtually anything, and any knowledge, can be used to "weapons" end. Why should this be different?
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
I wonder who long till IBM comes out with another super computer base on the Power4 processor. It should make the game more interesting since Power4 destroys Power3 in terms of performance and memory bandwith.
until we have computer the this compational power sitting on our desktops ?
Would the Japs wait 10 years or so, they could order one at dell for just 999$.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Don't you wonder why they bother? They're only going to have to destroy the thing when it sprouts purple tentacles and destroys Tokyo.
We all know that it's really used for Japan's top secret Super Ultra Omega Gundam Robot Mobile Suit 95006^10.
The supercomputer was built with 'the earth systems model' in mind. This will be the most ambitious computer model ever concieved. It aims to simulate every aspect of the earth system climate - including more processes than ever before: atmospheric processes, ocean processes,land surface feedbacks and land use models, economic models, ice sheet models, at a higher resolution than ever before.
... ;-)
Predictably the model is rumoured to be still 2 years off target yet - so there is the worlds fastest computer sitting idle for the mean time.
Perhaps I could buy some space to run my webpage off it in the mean time
"It's potentially quite significant," said Dr. Tim Kalleen, a space scientist who is director of the American climate research center. He said his researchers were discussing with their Japanese counterparts the technical details needed to make sure CounterStrike server will run on the Japanese machine.
I had no idea CS was still so popular.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
AGREE!
Even their Linux distro is better...and thats European so..guess they beat them too. Oh wait aren't the Americans better in making war, bombing country's and
making money?
Didn't Japan brag (to China) how they could build lots of nuclear weapons in very short time.. Wonder how they are going to accomplish that?
Non-weapons research my foot. While I know that other countries actually do have other things on their mind than defense against people they've pissed off, that doesn't mean that they're still going to reasearch weapons. ;-)
On a side note, how much of that computing power is used to administer tasks to all the processors? It seems to me that the more processors you have, the less power each adds on, because some power has to be saved for administrative tasks.
I wonder what kind of FPS someone could get on that thing...
that was 60 years ago? do you still refer to japanese as 'japs?' you're an asshole.
generates a login:
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
Is that soon, very soon Cray will be back into this game. It will be very interesting to see, yes indeed.
Japs are better at remembering where the fuck they left their shoes. Now AC, tell me why you don't just log in already.
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If Australia had a supercomputer, what would it be used for ?
1) Predict travel plans of boat people
2) Invade people privacy
3) Helping solve world problems (being a good global citizen)
4) others ?
You dont need to a supercomputer to know it wouldnt be 3.
...that I will finally be able to run Windows XP at an acceptable rate?
There needs to be a warning, "Windows XP: Turns your 35.6 teraflop computer into a PC-XT"
*grin*
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
Wow, that's quite an impressive film career. I didn't know he was such an accomplished actor.
Body found in Seattle home of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley
SEATTLE (AP) -- A body was found at the home of Layne Staley, lead singer and guitarist for the Seattle grunge band Alice in Chains.
The King County medical examiner's office scheduled an autopsy Saturday but investigator Jim Sosik could not immediately confirm the identity of the deceased late Friday night.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted unidentified law enforcement sources as saying the body was Staley's.
The person appeared to have been dead for several days, the P-I reported in Saturday editions.
Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Sue Stangl told The Associated Press she could not confirm the identity of the deceased.
A Seattle police dispatch officer referred inquiries to the police media officer, who did not return repeated pages.
Like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Alice in Chains was a band prominent in the early '90s Seattle heyday of grunge rock.
The group's first album, Facelift, was released in 1990 and the band quickly rose to prominence, following with albums including Dirt and Alice in Chains.
In a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Staley spoke of how his drug use influenced his lyrics.
"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them," he told the magazine. "Here's how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me -- and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks."
"You're just scared like a little white pussy. I'll fuck you till you love me, you faggot!"
...become a huge goddamned distributed-network-in-a-room?
Well, if you look at the number of processor of this supercomputer it's 5104 * 640 = 3.2 Trillion processors.
...) than those kind of computer. Not all applications can benefit of the NEC supercomputer (same things for the Beowulfs).
;-)
I'm not sure that the beowulf approach can follow this performance path. Of course, each processor is more powerfull however, you have to bring electricity and network to all of them (maybe half or a quarter of them if you use multiprocessor motherboard). Here, the number of processor is _huge_ which allow a massive
parallelization of your code.
Of course, some can argue that "we can always build a beowulf of those" but as far as I know, it's not really COTS material and I'm not sure it will be true one day.
Maybe Beowulf will not be able to compete in terms of peak performance. However, for the price it will gives you much more power.
As a conclusion, I would say that Beowulf are less parallel (even with fast network à la myrynet or infiniband or
Today NEC is faster and more powerfull but my guess is that it will not last
The questions are when and how ?
Even your mind is confused about the
h ol d=-1&commentsort=0&tid=137&mode=thread&pid=3378725 #3378777
fact that its confused or not makes you
i think no really stable!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31397&thres
Hmmm...I'd like to see the scientific data behind this statement.
Wow - 1 petaflop... Should we be posting our Beowulf cluster posts yet?? Anybody want to jump up and down and claim a first post??
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
And we were worried about the NSA cracking 1024 bit encryption?! http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/25/212521 1&mode=thread
Evil: "Back in the Sixties I had a weather changing machine that was in essence a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser." Using this laser, we punch a hole in the protective layer around the Earth, which we scientists call the "Ozone Layer." Slowly but surely, ultraviolet rays would pour in, increasing the risk of skin cancer. That is, unless the world pays us a hefty ransom."
Weather research my butt!
I really hate Dan Patrick.
It is sad to think that by virtue of nationality, it is assumed that a Japanese (or anybody else) is smarter/more clever than any other nationality. I think this racist and defeatist statement should have been posted AC -- so we wouldn't have to store your name along with all the other racists we have to keep track of...
AMEN. Like the Backstreet Boys said, Quit Playing Games with my Heart. But log the fuck in first, its better for the environemnt,.
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So, who's got their calculator handy?
Just think, now that they have all of this processing power they can do some of the following:
1) Make a metal that looks like plastic. Handy for all of those rocket launches.
2) Genetically engineer large reptiles to guard their country from invaders.
3) One word: Gundam.
4) Launch theoretical bombs at ASCI White and see if they can finally win the technology war.
5) Create a fully aware computer program that will help guard us from ourselves.
6) Make a fully synthetic actor that can outact, say, Keanu Reeves. (Oh, sorry, that was the Thunderbirds).
What other possibilities can this thing hold?
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Flamebait? Hmm... I don't see it but OK. Now how do I start flaming something that isn't flamebait?
A Beowulf cluster? Are you kidding? You're just a stupid Microsoft Sheep. You couldn't build a beowulf cluster if your life depended on it. Go back to your wussified Start menu and leave us alone.
The last time I checked, Google had more than 10,000 servers. I realize these aren't tightly coupled, parallel processors, but it's still a massive machine. Is it 10,000 computers or one? I say for the purposes of comparision that it would beat the Japanese computer. If not now, in a few months when Google's installation grows even larger. This piece struck me as a thinnly-veiled ploy to get more cash for some government computer lab.
Pictures here. so cool!
My current job is with a major American computer manufacturer. I don't want to disclose who they are, but you've heard of them. As an engineer, I review various RFP's from American research programs. For the last 7 years, they've been asking my company to build them a supercomputer that can model the Earth's climate. I approve the proposal, then pass it along to my boss for final approval. In all, I've approved 16 of these RFP's, and my boss has approved NONE. Yes, I'm a little bitter about it. By the way, did I mention my boss reads Slashdot? So do I, and every time there's another "bash climate science article posted," I try to head over the fab room, away from the boss's office, because I know there is going to be a tremendous amount of chortling and cackling as he reads through the Slashdot comments on that article. When I hear that laugh, I know final approval is somewhat unlikely.
So, Slashdot, thanks a lot.
Apparently, the Japanese don't read Slashdot. They've been investigating global climate change and other weather related phenomena with a seriousness that we Americans don't have. And now, look at the result. They've got a computer that's 20 times faster than anything we Americans can make.
And our politicians don't want to let our researchers import the good computers from Japan because of "dumping." Hey, Joe Politics: the Japanese computers are just better. The same politicians won't spend a dime on government sponsored R&D into supercomputers.
America is going to hell, unless we get back to basics and build better supercomputers designed to study the climate.
You keep track of all the racists on slashdot? What are you, some kind of Nazi?
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31025&ci
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Somebody forgot RC5 from the application list.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
... American government (world police) nuke Japanese computing facility because "They were going to use it to build nukes"
What i don't understand about the whole supercomputer thing is that nuclear weapons were developed in WW2 with no more computing power than a wrist-watch and theres already a whole bunch of test data that anyone can look at.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What have they named this computer?
Melchavor, Casper or Belphazar?
To hack it you would need to use the 666 decyption algorithm P
will it run Quake at reasonable FPS ?
Finaly somme thing nice is been done whit computer.
They test one.
Ad infinitum while the world cringes in fear.
It's going to get ugly when Cuba starts hosting Japanese built systems.
[Okay. Lame joke. It sounded better before I typed it, but I'm too attatched to the effort to not post. You're Welcome.]
-Fantastic Lad
ha ha... you overfed, under-educated, pizza-chomping asswipes are probably thinking Hiroshima might not have been such a good idea now :)
Mod parent post up! What's this -1 bullsh-t.
Jeez, could you imagine a single one of those...
Faster machines are being designed at government-financed labs in Livermore, Pittsburgh and Los Alamos, N.M., but they are far from operational. That is from the article but I would like to know more about the specs and when they plan to be opperational.
...we still operate under this 640 node barrier.
But does it run Quake?!
"All in all, it is a surprisingly large amount for a country that doesn't go into military actions. Who are they defending themselves from?"
Red China and North Korea, for starters (who both have nukes, BTW). They don't exactly have the friendliest of neighbors over there. They would be stupid not to have a good defensive force.
Pocket? What's the point of playing Quake in your pocket? Or maybe I shouldn't ask...
640*5104==3.2M CPUs... so I can dedicate four CPUs to each pixel on a 1024x768 display, and get reasonable Quake performance without hardware acceleration? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Finally, some new news (as opposed to "this is nothing new").
;)
Question - why is it that we JUST found out about this? How long did it take to build this giant supercomputer? Companies like IBM talk about what they're building long before they are done. Speaking of which, I guess IBM's Deep Blue is kinda underpowered now, relatively speaking.
One more thing - why all the hub-bub about US export restrictions re: computer power? If Japan already has this much computing power, who wants our "junk" anyway?
I lied - one more thing - does the NSA have penis envy over this? Or is their computer still faster?
It takes about a few weeks on Sun ultra sparcs to simulate a week long air pollution scenario over the north eastern united states. This is assuming a 8x8 km grid (where the 8x8 sqkm area is one "point"). The wind modeling is extremely simplified, and the focus is on a select set of contaminants.
To do a detailed wind modeling, and have a finer resolution, and to do some statistical analysis of different input conditions... suddenly we end up with requirements far more than the current computing power.
We can always come up with a problem that is more complex than we can solve using current computing power. That is a good pursuit.
S
The economy in Japan right now is suffering pretty bad. The unmployment rate is relatively high at over 5% and has been higher the than US has had at any point in our "recession". So the government decides to pump a few hundred million into the economy while being able to lay claim to the fastet computer in the world, to give the citizens a little consumer confidence in their technoligically supperior country.
That is why is Jap economy is in the shitter. They don't come up with ideas like that anymore.
You forgot: bombing our allies.
And yet it still takes 30 seconds to start Explorer.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
What surprises me is that this is the first we (Slashdot readers) have heard about it.
Try again
I remember seeing this in a magazine a couple years back as a planned project.
Nice to see it working now.
Referenced in Inside the CIA: Japan at one point was actually designing nuclear weapons, but the CIA used political and economical pressure to stop them. If weapons are whan Japan wants, I'm sure we can talk them out of it.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
Sorry, just couldn't resist. :)
Well, now they've got what they wanted. GWB has brought the military spending back to Cold War level while schooling, welfare and public highway system and railroads are deteriorating. But hey, who cares as long as the military industrial complex gets something to do.
The three year old cpu Fujitsu VPP5000 appears to outshine anything designed by any American company.
./a.out -Wl,-Lr
e am_mail/2001 / 001.html
0 01 / 000.html
A single CPU on the STREAM benchmark:
Fujitsu VPP5000
Double-precision stream_c
- Results for STREAM on Fujitsu VPP5000 single processor, Thu Feb 1 11:22:45
bash-2.03$ uname -p -s -v -m
UNIX_System_V 3 5000 UXP/V
bash-2.03$ frt -V
frt : Fujitsu UXP/V Fortran V20L20 Driver L00091 (Nov 20 2000 18:54:41)
bash-2.03$ frt -Of stream_d.f
bash-2.03$
Double precision appears to have 16 digits of accuracy
Assuming 8 bytes per DOUBLE PRECISION word
Array size = 8000000
Offset = 0
The total memory requirement is 183 MB
You are running each test 10 times
--
The *best* time for each test is used
*EXCLUDING* the first and last iterations
Your clock granularity/precision appears to be 1 microseconds
Function Rate (MB/s) Avg time Min time Max time
Copy: 37780.4014 0.0034 0.0034 0.0035
Scale: 35724.2534 0.0036 0.0036 0.0036
Add: 34594.5946 0.0056 0.0055 0.0056
Triad: 37543.9969 0.0051 0.0051 0.0052
Solution Validates!
bash-2.03$
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/str
======
Pentium 4:
avg, MB/s, of 10 runs:
copy 1322.85
scale 1320.12
add 1514.75
triad 1508.11
System: 1.4 GHz Pentium4 with 1 GB PC800 RDRAM, in Intel i850 board
(homemade system). All 64 RDRAM devices taken, so this is not an ideal
system r.e. latency.
Hard disk is 5400 rpm 30 GB Maxtor.
Executable: exact same as for Asus K7V Athlon 800, which I submitted June 4,
2000.
Compiled with Intel C/C++ 4.5, essentially Pentium Pro optimizations (no
SIMD, no Pentium 4-specific optimizations).
Ran 10 times in sequence (from batch file), and averaged all 10 for results
reported above.
Somehow I forgot to mention the OS: Windows 98 SE.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/stream_mail/2
This is great news really. With the supercomputers built for weapons research naturally people doing "normal" research will have problems getting access.
After all they don't want just anyone poking around and finding things they shouldn't.
But with non weapons research systems I can see academics from all over the world getting easier access and maybe something interesting can happen.
640 nodes * 5104 processors is 3266560 processors.
35.6 teraflops (35600000000000 flops)
35600000000000/3266560 = 2724579 (2.7 megaflops per processor)
Where did you get 8 gigaflops from?
This means war!!!!
:) Rock on Japan.
j/k
They're probably using it to find ways to permently get rid of that "I'm Turning Japanesa" song.
Here's the press release from NEC, from back in March: http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0203/0801.html
Eliza did that several years ago.
The japanese computer has MILLIONS of processors. Google doesn't even come close to 1/100th of the size.
Google can NOT do 36.5 TERAFLOPS.
The japanese computer is bigger than the top 10 US supercomputers combined. DO you mean to say google is bigger than that?
ANd btw, this project has been in the works for years, I remember reading about it in some science magazine 3 or 4 years ago, when they started the project.
Weather simulation or A-Bomb simulation requires massive communication between each computing node. For example, each node would typically compute about a number of small elements that would need to give information to each other such as temperature and pressure or surrounding elements in order to calculate energy / mass flow. Think of lots of objects communicating with each other on the same node and on other nodes. Google, IMHO, is probably more like an "embarrassly parallel" problem (yep, thats the mathematical term for it). Divide the problem up into many parts and send them to a computing node from a master and then send the answers (lists usually, or empty list) back to the master. Essentially, no communication between the nodes. I suspect that Google lies between the two extremes and very close to embarrassingly parallel.
By some rough statistics that I remember, it could render the original Toy Story completely in 30 hours easily. It might not even take that long. Rendering a whole movie in a day, Edwin Catmull would be proud.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The article mentioned:
Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said they were planning to work with the Japanese earth simulation center to convert United States weather modeling codes to work with the new computer.
Would that code most likely be in something like C, C++ or in Fortran or something else entirely? And what kind of changes would you be talking about when adapting it to vector based processors?
Any mad weather scientists out there like to fill in the lay public on the rough details?
WOPR
"Would you like a nice game of chess?"
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
This is comperable to the computing power in desktops we will probably see by 2010.
CNN storyregarding that Linux computer...
but does it open the pod doors when asked to? :-)
... in effect creating more sophisticated
random number generators with more digits
of "precision."
I knew it, they were building the MAGI system!
Go Akagi!
1. What is the the operating system running?
2. How much electricity does it burn?
Anybody knows?
I'm just waiting for Tom's Hardware to write up an article on how to overclock this to get an additional 1,000,000 fps in Quake III.
Imagine how fast I could get my PR0N to load up!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
"...and other non-weapons research."
Uh-huh. That's what insanely fast monster computers are always used for...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
And asked for his opinion on the new Japanese supercomputer, Bill Gates replied "640 nodes ought to be enough for everybody".
All the sudden the most annoying NBC "the only team of certified meteorologists in the Delaware Valley" and "Most accurate forcasting with the Doppler 10,000" seem kind of funny.
I wonder how far in advance this new supercomputer can predict how far John Bolaris is going to be off in his predictions again (the poor guy made some completely overhyped predictions about a blizzard last year in Philly area).
Anyhow, hats off, Japan! I'm impressed.
Okay, so then the Japanese complain about us dumping. Then what? Let's say they win in WTO hearings. How nice for them. Then the US just ignores it. Why? Because we can. What real punishment can the WTO provide?
The WTO is totally powerless, especially against the US. The only thing it provides is a common forum for working these issues out and for establishing a sort of trade best practices. But when you get right down to it, trade disputes are settled as they always have been, either through discussion, or through various embargoes, tariffs, etc. The WTO may add some legitimacy to a particular countries use of some tariffs, etc, but overall it doesn't provide any significant sanctioning ability.
That's the funny thing with all of the world governmental bodies. They have no real power, they mostly just serve as negotiating platforms. The real power continues to be held by individual nations and there's no evidence that they'll be giving up that power anytime soon.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Take that first sentance, rephrase as follows:
Okay, so the japanase complain about us being protectionist and blocking them.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Imagine how many SETI@home data units that thing could process in half an hour...!
..MEGA GODZILLA! Complete with rocket launcher arms and jump-jet feet!
Live web cams
the factory
Seems sort of strange that most folks are most interested in the potential for nuclear weapons research with this latest development. If anyone actually thinks that Japan is interested in furthering nuclear research, they might want to open up the history books to try to understand why they really have no interest in developing nuclear bombs. For anyone that has actually visited Japan, they would realize that they are committed to the removal of ALL nuclear weapons. It's a devastating weapon that should have never been designed. There are those that will argue (and I would agree) that had it not been for the nuclear weapon, WW2 may have had a vastly different outcome. But given the ability to build a "dirty nuke" these days by anyone that has a serious desire to do so, has ramifications that we should hope never comes to pass.... I believe the *real* topic of discussion here should be this significant leap forward with regards to cryptoanalysis. The Japanese are close allies with us in many areas, I suspect there's probably some INTEL sharing going on too.
This is a tragedy! A computer soooo fast being wasted on high school junk science projects like global warming.
OF course you have to assume that under typical black projects the DoE/DoD/NSA is running machines far more complex and powerful than they let on. After all SR-71s were a strategic asset 40 years ago and the performance specs are still largely classified. Similarly with computing. A
Also keep in mind that several years ago the US govt complained about the French performing nuclear testing under the rubric that they could do it all on a machine. And low and behold only a few weeks ago the DoE 'announced' that they now have the capability to do that, seemingly forgetting that it was previously announced in 1999. So in the intervening 3 years how far do you think they've come.
You know, there are scads of scientists working for the govt who could probably get on the short list for the Nobel if they were allowed to publically publish... and that's basic research. Imagine what applied engineering looks like..
think about the speed at which you could create metacreation poser-based pornography with that puppy. or, given its country of origin, imagine the speed at which you could process hentai videos into compact divx files for distribution via the net and/or lan parties.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
My God!!? If you're really worried about global warming, turn that computer off! I can't imagine the heat it generates.
People... there are 640 nodes and a total of 5120 CPUs, not 5120 PER NODE, there are 8 CPUs per node and each node can do 64GFLOP (8GFLOP/CPU), that equates to approx 40TFLOP. I has been posted... but here is the NEC press release that makes these facts a little more clear... http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0203/0801.html
...how dare you! i'm appalled! the good ol' USA? never! another cheeseburger? supersize it!
Here's a book about what the U.S. government is doing. It's worse than you think: What should be the Response to Violence?
Contrary to rumor,
n e02.html
the machine is constructed from 640 nodes, with 8 vector processors per node, and 16GB RAM per node. That totals 5120 processors and 10TB memory.
See http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/eng/outline/outli
Also of note:
peak performance per processor: 8 GFLOPS
total peak performance: 40 TFLOPS
Remember, when they give you TFLOPS or TOPS values, they're giving you PEAK values.
In reality, most of the time, performance is way below peak values, even for the algorithms for which the computer was designed to handle. IBM's pacific blue has a peak TFLOPS value around 3.6TFLOPS...but in reality, its usually around 1.2TFLOPS.
There's no reason to believe this machine will be any different.
Furthermore, the performance of this machine is likely to sink like a rock when its used outside the area it was specially designed for.
In other words, the best supercomputers in the world are still the ones made by starbridge systems, which were bought by NASA (I believe the one NASA bought was called HAL 15, or something like that).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Too bad the post on the main page came across as America vs Japan.
This particular picture (from the above links.) is mildly disturbing.
0 3. jpg
http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/gallary/images/
"I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave...."
Lousy facepalm.
The fact of the matter is that undocumented immigrant piece-workers soldering hardware backplanes cost more in the U.S. than they do in Japan, because Japan is closer to major poulation centers.
Face it, Mexico City might be the biggest metropolitan area, but there are 2 billion people as close to Tokyo as Maine is to Honduras. This is a continental phenomenon, not a cultural phenomenon. American and Japanese capatalists are equally willing to exploit the poor so that they might continue to do so.
However, the advent of some technologies is providing a degree of opportunity to the oppressed. As communication and education technology spreads, democracy is enabled, and assuming democracy spreads, wealth will be redistributed on a more equatable basis. Witness the fate of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philipines, for example.
With the advent of the WTO, American lawyers should not be able to take such advantage of the local underclass, but the U.S. has seen fit to ignore International Law. When is the last time you saw the ratified treaty, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, actually cited on even footing with the U.S. Constitution, which dictates treaties as equivalent? You do not, because the U.D.H.R. is in conflict with much U.S., State, County, and Municipal law. Plus, the U.S. tends to support Latin American coups and has even mined Nicaraguan harbors.
I say, let the Japanese throw the book at the U.S., and may the Moore's law march on unimpeded? So what if predicting the weather is a military skill. It is also a picnic dating skill, and love trumps guns.
http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/
a jium a/
is the homepage of the Earth Simulator.
In the middle of
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/2002/y
you can find some report(Japanese) and pictures of it.
when you finally grow up, you may discover that 99% of the computers ever made have been constructed for some other purpose than playing a deathly boring first person killing game.
That was classic intercourse!
The correct URL of the second is
HERE
This is faster than the SETI network.
SETI operates at 17 teraflops, but at a cost of only $500000.
Hmmmm...
Maybe they could make the next Pokemon game for this system (gosh, that would mean thousands more pokemons, each with a DNA, Real-time rendered evolutive 3D model and maybe even a logical answer to how a goddamn rat can throw electricity without frying his own self!)
Or another scenario would be them using this technology to simulate the western music market. They could use this info to calculate how to make J-Pop popular in the West (that would be really evil; worse than an atomic bomb).
We're wondering why you just don't log out already.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Sorry to bust in on your well-earned inferiority complex induced hissy fit because you are of some subhuman nationality. BTW, what is it? Are you euro trash? Are you an Arab sand nigger?
Since you of such low intelligence and cannot garner 3rd grade level reading comprehsion, you will not notice that there NO reference to neutrality in the above post. It was simply an explanation as to why Japan cannot build up a military.
Now go strap some dynamite to your 6 year old sister/sex partner like a good little third worlder. You don't have the guts to be a "martyr" yourself.
Nuclear weapons are the most sensitive issue in Japan, Japanese people are strongly against it. Since the nuclear accident in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1999, the most serious nuclear leakage accident, Japanese citizens have lost confidence about nuclear industry, they asked governments to reduce or stop nuclear power plant construction.
So how, exactly, do I "not know what I'm talking about"? --
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Those fukkers in Japan are sick little monkeys! Have you ever seen their cartoons? I'll bet they're using 35 terflops to create a wild NAZI fuck machine (ala Uroto Suki Doji.)
This
You can't be serious.
Tell me, you are not serious...
Oh, shit, you are serious.
I'm waiting for this thing to develop an A.I., sprout tentacles, become mobile then rumble out and start to destroy Tokyo.
And the answer it gave: 42.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
Why do all of those boxen look like blue clones of HAL9000?
Mommy, I'm scared...
What a monster! Should dominate the number one spot at Top500 for some time! :)
:)
I should imagine a computer system of this power will have the US Government a little concerned.. I shouldnt imagine it will be long before they announce that they have designed a 'more powerful' system though
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
It would not suprise me if the US all ready had a petaflop of super computing power or more in one machine. The box might sit down at some government agency like the NSA (the worlds largest employer of mathmaticians) and be classified so that no person without a clearance and need to know will ever know about it. At least for thirty years or so.
Disclaimer:
I have no clearance , so this is sheer speculation on my part.
Will it run Linux?
non-beowulf cluster of those.
Haha...
ok, not funny I guess.
modesty is natural while blowing your own horn is shameful.
AFAIK, according to their treaty, Japan isn't even ALLOWED to research nuclear weapons.
They also aren't able to send troops out in certain situations (they couldn't help us in Afghanistan, except with some money/equipment/civillian work).
The Japanese are known for their competitive spirit. I say, "Good for them" on the computer they have made. Give credit where credit is due. Now, it's your turn to make/create something worthwhile.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
You know that skit on Conan Obrien where he shows that a story in the back of the paper is humorously related to a story in the front?
Front page story: Computer generated child porn legalized.
Back page story: Japan builds fastest computer.
(* He said the introduction of democracy to China was essential to world peace. *)
That way they *vote* to kick our butts. Although being a democracy seems to overall reduce agression, it is no guarentee. India still wants to kick Pakistan's butt for some reason.
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0203/0801.html
mostly the same info already mentioned but
does offer a few pics
That they know of...
hehe
Magius_AR
...they come in different colors! I wonder which is faster: the green or the blue ones?
I'm going to wait until the charcoal DV version comes out... it should be faster.
You speak as if you're more than one person. I like that, I like that a lot.
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I believe it has to do with the interconnects. While a cluster's many nodes may be talking to each other at 1 Gbps, or whatever, these speeds don't work for a supercomputer like this. A cluster or distributed network is good for jobs that can be split up easily. For example, SETI@home or load balancing servers. However, this is the world of simulations. Like people were pointing out during our discussion on ASCI White, the entire environment of the simulation must be calculated simultaneously. You can't calculate what is going on at point (x1,y1,z1) at time t1 and then move on to (x2,y2,z2) at time t1 becuase the two are touching and interdependant on each other. This is true for every point in the simulation's scope. Therefore, the processors have to have an interconnect speed that will allow them to act as if they are all on the same bus and process data simultaneously for all points before moving on to the next time increment.
Of course, I am only a lowly CS student and I'm sure that someone out there can give a more detailed explanation. Thanks.
>> What surprises me is that this is the first we (Slashdot readers) have heard about it.
Aha, but we can use JPEG, I just read! I wonder if those japs know about this incredible secret?
OTOH, maybe MS is now asking itself if that XBOX provocation was indeed a good idea...
With such a computer we could customize a little more than Quake players skin... how about tweaking a monster's DNA? Talk about bloat!
2002-04-20 06:27:35 [-0000] World (Fastest Super Computer) x 20: Japan 1, US (articles,news) (rejected)
Suckmydick.We now know WHO really started it all. From the press release:
"Blue Gene/L will also be a part of IBM's research in "autonomic computing", an initiative to design computer systems that are self-healing, self-managing and self-configuring."
unfinished: (adj.)
Every body knows NURV is non-nuclear but still weapons oriented. The Eva's are all there to save us against the angels when they come.... they are pro gay too, their main pilot is gay. His name is Shinji.
So this new supercomputer will be the driving force behind the desing team of the next-generation of Evas.... a new tomorrow awaits us....
CC
NO SIG
(* A cluster or distributed network is good for jobs that can be split up easily. For example, SETI@home or load balancing servers. However, this is the world of simulations.....[but] the entire environment of [certain] simulation must be calculated simultaneously. You can't calculate what is going on at point (x1,y1,z1) at time t1 and then move on to (x2,y2,z2) at time t1 becuase the two are touching and interdependant on each other. *)
This sounds like the definition of "largest supercomputer" depends on *what* you are calculating. The SETI project could qualify as the largest if not doing the "touch-heavy" kind of simulations you talk about.
Perhaps "the largest supercomputer for X-type calculations", but maybe not for Y-type.
It sounds like Japan is trying to have "the biggest" simply for the sake of bragging rights (perhaps as advertizing for country industry of a sorts). Japanese culture tends to have a fascination with "the largest". This is why Tokyo is so big, not to mention Sumo wrestlers. They got themselves into hot water by purchasing some big-name American landmarks/industries in the late 80's, only to watch them not produce profits. (Note that every culture has its own silly quirks, like our rabid lawyers, so I am not picking on their entire culture, just one aspect.)
Table-ized A.I.
C'om on.....its not the end of the world guys..
So, the japs have a large boxen somewhere and beat mighty america at something other than delivering pizza under 30 mins.... big fucking deal...
You guys are sudenly so much more sensitive at the rest of the world having leadership at anything....
Buzz off....japs rule for having their neat thingie.... no need fo america to have a larger box somewhere or anything...its just a damn weather box too...
Alex
NO SIG
i sometimes feel that slashdot is
too much nationalistic, i mean "simple"
maybe i feel it often
coward
They just had to be better than them ;).
0xC3
Applications include climate modeling, global warming prediction, and other non-weapons research.
... and Word 2003, which no doubt will require a machine of this stature to just run that annoying little animated Helpy Helperton thing that everyone immediately turns off.
So we should start calling this the first of the Oracles?
-Knots
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
...will it excite the aliens like a Pentium 4 does?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
http://zmag.org/zmag/articles/barzinn.htm
I want you to talk about your World War Two bombardier experience. I've heard you discuss it in public lectures, and you write about it. There were two missions in particular that you always mention, one over Pilsen in Czechoslovakia and the other in France in the town of Royan. Why are they so important to you?
These things weren't important at the time. I was another member of the Air Force doing my duty, listening to my briefings before going out on the flight and dropping the bombs where I was supposed to, without thinking, where am I dropping them? What am I doing? Who lives here? What's going on here? I flew the last missions of the war. By then we were well into Germany. We were running out of targets, and so we were bombing Eastern Europe. I dropped bombs on Hungary. I remember the raid on Pilsen. A lot of planes went over. I remember reading about the raid after the war. It was described by Churchill in his memoirs as, Well, we bombed Pilsen and there were very few civilian casualties. Then I was in Europe years after that, sometime in the mid-1960s, in Yugoslavia. I ran into a couple from Pilsen. Hesitantly, I told them that I had been in one of the crews that bombed Pilsen. They said, when you finished the streets were full of corpses, hundreds and hundreds of people killed in that raid. It was only after the war that I began to think about the raids I had been on. The thing about being in the Air Force and dropping bombs from 35,000 feet is that you don't see anybody, human beings, you don't hear screams, see blood, see mangled bodies. I understand very well how atrocities are committed in modern warfare, from a distance. So there I was doing these things.
The raid on Royan was an even more difficult experience for me as I thought about it later. It was a situation where the war was just about over, a few months before the end of the war. We thought we weren't going to fly any more missions, because we had already overrun France, taken most of Germany, there was virtually nothing left to bomb, and everybody knew the war was going to be over in a few weeks. We were awakened at one in the morning, the usual waking up time if you're going to fly at six. It's not like in the movies where you leap out of bed into the cockpit, rev up the engines and you're off. Five boring hours of listening to briefings, getting your equipment, putting on your electrically heated suit, going to the bombardiers' briefing, the officers' briefing, going to eat and deciding whether you eat square eggs or round eggs. They briefed us and told us we were going to bomb this little town on the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux, a town called Royan. They showed it to us on the map. Nobody asked why. You don't ask questions at briefings. To this day I feel ashamed that it didn't even occur to me to ask, Why are we doing this when the war is almost over? Why are we bombing this little French town when France is all ours? There were a few thousand German soldiers holed up near this town, waiting for the war to end, not doing anything, not bothering anybody. But we were going to destroy them.
So twelve hundred heavy bombers were sent over. I didn't know how many bombers were sent. All I knew was my squadron of twelve bombers were going over. I could see other squadrons. It wasn't until later, when I did research into it after the war, that I realized that it was twelve hundred heavy bombers going over against two or three thousand German soldiers. But they told us in the briefing, You're going to carry a different time of bomb in the bomb bay. Not the usual demolition bomb. You're going to carry canisters, long cylinders of jellied gasoline. It didn't mean anything to us, except we knew jellied gasoline would ignite. It was napalm.
It was only after the war that I began to think about that raid and did some research and visited Royan. I went into the ruins of the library, now rebuilt, and read what they had written about it. I wrote an essay about that bombing. It epitomized the stupidity of modern warfare and how the momentum of military machines carries armies on to do the most atrocious things that any rational person sitting down for five minutes and thinking about it would stop immediately. So we destroyed the town, the German soldiers, the French also who were there. In one of my essays I coupled it with the bombing of Hiroshima as two bombings that at the time, I ashamed to say, I welcomed. With Royan it wasn't that I welcomed it, I was just doing it. With Hiroshima I welcomed it because it meant that the war would end and I wouldn't have to go to the Pacific and fly any more bombing missions.
Hi, I am from Japan. He is absolutely right. The translation is indeed sloppy, and the original text does not say anything about computer, but locker room.
Japan does have a relatively large defense buget, and a lot of modern weaponry (Aegis class missile cruisers, AWACS, etc). However, they go through great lengths to ensure that the hardware they have is "defensive" in nature.
For an example, back in 1998, N. Korea launched a rocked that passed over Japan and landed somewhere in the Pacific. For a while, the Japanese thought (and I know this because I was there) it was an experimental missile launch, and were generally threatened by it. I remember reading an article in some magazine saying how it would be impossible for the SDF to strike at North Korean missile sites, even in self defense. This is because without air refueling capabilities or aircraft carriers, none of the strike aircraft in their arsenal would be able to reach North Korea and return back to base. Needless to say, Japan does not possess long range cruise missles or surface to surface missiles suitable for such a task.
In some ways, I think the SDF is only for show. The only thing they can effectively defend against is a small scale invasion, for which the threat is practically non-existent. But then, I guess most nations have armies that are either self fufilling or self defeating in purpose anyway.
As for nuclear weapons, I'll say this as a native Japanese speaker and someone who understands the land, people and culture: it won't happen in our life time. Sure, Japan has all the necessary technologies to slap up an ICBM in no time flat. But the public/political support for such a move is simply not there... in fact, even suggesting nuclear armament would probably be suicidal for a politician.
With regards, to Article 9 of the constitution (the one banning all wars)... The constitution was written after WW2 (in 1945), and hasn't been ammended (at least it wasn't the lats time I checked), even though there is an article (54 or 56, can't remember which) that specifically allows for ammendments. Why? Because the public (and politicians) feared that making ammendments to the constitution at all would eventually lead to ammendments to Article 9. So they stuck with an outdated constitution for a long, long time. Perhaps that'll help you understand how sensitive this subject is in Japan (and calm fears among some of you who still seem to think that Japan's just itching to go to war or something).
---
Open Source Shirts
I think you'll find ideally the US would go to war with weapons that would annihilate all life and leave all buildings and weapons.
Pakistan is full of psychotic muslim wierdos who would destroy any democracy they could - don't forget, if the people are running a country, Allah isn't...
This is not a joke... Canadians are outraged by the deaths of the 4 Canadian men who died and 8 who were injured because an American F16 mistakenly dropped two bombs on them...
I find it interesting how little is said about it in the American media... meanwhile Canadian press coverage is all over this... Americans won't even let the Canadians interview the Pilot directly. Meanwhile if an American died it'd be so outrageous and all over the frontpage news... Americans only seem to care about themselves... sorry to say that.
According to their press release: http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/jp/press/020418.ht ml
Peak: 40 TFLOPS
Actual: 35.61 TFLOPS
They also give some numbers for ASCI White:
Peak: 12.288
Actual: 7.226
Unless they're lying in the press release statement, it seems like more than just hype.
---
Open Source Shirts
The fastest computer in the world is not known, or at least not known by many. When is the last time the U.S government or any other for that matter told people about their computers. Information about computers used in WWII and just after are JUST NOW becoming unclassified. The amount of money needed to build computers like this for the U.S. government is paltry. Remember the U.S. governement rounds all numbers by the millions.
The article should describe the world's fastest publicly known computer.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
I wonder if there is a seti client of it...
Well it doesn't look any fancier than the WOPR in Wargames. I mean come on. Mathew Broderick had an account on the really big iron. He could play chess, talk to it, and even nuke the world.
I will be really impressed when our real life computers can do what the ones in our fave movies can do.
Wargames - Talking Box with Nukes
2001 - HAL was good and Evil and was a great alarm clock. (possibly a code branch of Windows)
Hacker - When do I get a chick who looks like Angelina Jolie in spandex and who punches code? OK, ex girlfriend was one but dont want my site slash dotted.
And my all time favorite who is not a computer. Bender from Futurama. A fully aware intelligence that will drink beer, steal your money, and tell you to bite his shiny metal ass?
Call me when our boxen can do any of things. I would like to know. Make all of our time in front of the CRT more enjoyable.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The grid they are building will be four times as powerful as the system described in this article.
Nope....I am thinking I wish I knew where your house is, and to have a tactical nuke in the area to show you my sentiments. ;-)
Perhaps, one reason that the Japanese are ahead of the Americans is that we Americans cannot read a simple press release. It does not say 5120 CPUs per node. The release says 8 CPUs per node, totaling 5120 CPUs across 640 nodes.
But don't become uptight. We all know that Japanese technology is just a twist or adaptation of Western technology. We are #1, and we always will be #1.
I prefer _WHEAT_ over rice any day of the week.
This is actually the prototype for the Playstation 3 which Sony is contracting out to NEC.
;-)
NEC have figured out that if they can simulate the enitre earth on this hardware, then it's capable of rendering any game imaginable.
Now all they have to do is shrink it in size
-marc
Can I put a distributed.net client on it? Gotta find the key...gotta find the key...
Help us build a better map!
(* Pakistan is full of psychotic muslim wierdos who would destroy any democracy they could - don't forget, if the people are running a country, Allah isn't... *)
But they are not currently running the country, at least not most of it.
Besides, how exactly would India solve that if it was true?
Nuke the whole country just to get rid of the psychopath fanatics? I doubt that would work. It would just invite more "martyrs" to bother you from other countries with psychopath fanatics. IOW, trigger their "victim gland"
Table-ized A.I.
Or the galaxy's most popular celebrity, Sharon Apple ...
In realtime 3D with blood and swords and genuine terrified screams as a pawn is ridden down by a knight... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'm 39, have at least three children, and earn $120 an hour for consulting. And rarely get to play Quake, which I do admire for its, uh, execution.
Yeah, running viruses, apparently... oops, Billy boy only has 94% of the desktop. Does Quake exist for the Mac? If so, we could probably go pretty close to 99% at least capable of it, if not actually designed to do it. Tell me with a straight face that all of those 3D cards ship for use only in CAD workstations.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
-
Overview of the design: note that it's 640 nodes with 8 processors each
-
Earth Simulator entry/home page
-
Jamstec -- Japan Marine Science and Technology Center: Looks pretty much like the USA's NOAA
-
News on Top500 Supercomputer Sites where y'all should have been getting this kind of info from to begin with
I can't account for the 16 missing processors - possibly the 640 nodes include not only processing nodes but also various management/admin nodes that do not have the full 8 processors. Maybe it's just mis-information that propagated through the news. If someone finds better as-built specs, drop me a line.From the Slashdot email:
Japan Builds World's Fastest Computer
from the rice-rocket dept..
Isn't 'rice rocket' racist? If some black guy's had made this computer would you have called it NIGGER ROCKET?
From the Slashdot email:
Japan Builds World's Fastest Computer
from the rice-rocket dept..
Isn't 'rice rocket' racist? If some black guy's had made this computer would you have called it NIGGER ROCKET?
No, not really... For example, take the Gulf war. It was supposed to be a high tech war, using "smart" weapons. In actual fact, later on a senior US military official admitted that only 7% of the weopons dropped on Iraq during the war were "smart"... and from other documented sources, 70% of the not "smart" weopons missed their targets completely causing "collateral" ie civilian casualties. From journalists such as the famous John Pilger in his hidden agendas book, we find that in fact during the Gulf war over 250 000 people died, of which only a fraction were military, the rest civilian. When I talked to a sales person about what the Hawk planes do, and many other weopons, they had such stuff as copper dust which is meant to be inhaled into the lungs to kill lots upon lotsa people, Napalm B is made from benzene, polyethylene which burns on contact with skin and almost impossible to get off, killing slowly and painfully. And u call this saving people's lives? more like torturing the remnants of their lives.
Hehe, love that Guy. I ended up taking 2 days of work off waiting for the snow.
And you that getting a few SETI Work Units for your small fleet, imagine trying to run 5000+ processes at once.
I'm told it will push a winmodem at 55 kbs.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
With all that power you need a big MF reset button.
I wager I'm not alone in wishing you'd just go away.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Oh my word! That would be a fairly safe bet, wouldn't you say, you fucking high roller? Do feel free to join the longdong haters society, you homochimpsexual. You remind me a lot of Gary Sandy, TV's beloved Andy Travis of WKRP fame and Ohio's favorite son. He never could deal with trying to live up to the Donny Most standard of excellence.
Duh, on second thought, after 405 posts in a couple of months, I think you've finally convinced me to give up the troll lifestyle. How'd you do it, shren? How'd you get me to stop? These are serious questions I will certainly still be pondering weeks from now, on the eve of my next hundred posts.
So sez Donny Most, TV's beloved Ralph Malph Alpha of Happy Days fame. No, I will not sign your titz so please pull your shirt back down.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31072&cid=3
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Another computer you may be interested in is Grape-6 which is a 48 Tflop accelerator for gravitational calculations, developed at U. Tokyo for astrophysics. The creator won the Gordon Bell Award a couple years ago.
bite
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
me.
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no.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Oh you are such a tease! This is getting erotic!
3 40 810
Make me feel dirty again. Baby, hit me one more time.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31074&cid=3
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yawn.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
What, you don't want to keep going?
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No, I just don't live in front of a computer. What were we talking about again?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Sexy young children, and the Cincinnatian karma whores who love them.
Oh, Timmah.
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