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Nerd Vacation to the Earth Simulator

Posted by michael on from the first-random-tourist-that-they-had-ever-had dept.

eecue writes "Earlier this year I went on vacation to japan. At the end of my trip I was lucky enough to receive a tour of the Earth Simulator, which is the world's fastest super computer. I took pictures and wrote about it."

7 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by protest_boy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if we can slashdot the worlds fastest supercomputer? ;-)

    1. Re:Hmm by ender81b · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well that would, of course, depend on how much bandwith is running to said server now wouldn't it? =)

      Found some nice info (good old google) on said Supercomputer though since the sites linked article didn't have much.

      A Time Article on The Earth Simulator

      Top 500 page on Earth Simulator

      NEC page on the Earth Simulator

      Google Translated Powerpoint presentation on the Earth Simulator

      A snippet(s) of info:
      "Based on the NEC SX architecture, 640 nodes, each node with 8 vector processors (8 Gflop/s peak per processor), 2 ns cycle time, 16GB shared memory. Total of 5120 total processors, 40 TFlop/s peak, and 10 TB memory. "

      "Earth Simulator's processors are one-chip LSIs fabricated with 0.15 micron CMOS process and copper wiring. Highly optimized software and high-speed networks that pump massive amounts of data through 7.8TB/s bandwidth connecting the 640 processing nodes are key to the amazing efficiency of Earth Simulator."

  2. Reliability of its predictions by hak+hak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder how far in advance things like, say, the climate can be predicted, even by such a powerful computer. It's almost impossible to predict the weather for even a small area (I live in the Netherlands) for more than the coming few days to a week, because it's so sensitive to small errors. (That doesn't mean I'm not impressed by the thing, of course.)

    1. Re:Reliability of its predictions by Buck2 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You Yanks no nothing. ...

      We know something about our language. :)

      --

      As my father lik@(munch munch)... ....
  3. How Stupid!!!! by brett720 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they are going to simulate the earth...then of course as part of the earth, they will have to simulate the EARTH SIMULATOR(1)...which will have to simulate the EARTH SIMULATOR(2) simulating the EARTH SIMULATOR(1) which will have to simulate the EARTH SIMULATOR(3) simulating the EARTH SIMULATOR(2) simulating the EARTH SIMULATOR(1)..etc.etc.etc...and of course that must go on indefinitely! Dont they have better things to spend millions of dollars of processing power on?

    1. Re:How Stupid!!!! by Genrou · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not only that - it is completelly unnecessary. We all know that, at the end of processing, result will be 42.

  4. Holes in the grid by hughk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You are quite right and one of the major issues is the holes in the grid, even at 3Km. Satellite based observation dosn't help much as you only 'see' the tops of any clouds and have no way to measure barometric pressure.

    Many ships record information for the meteorlogical services, but the trouble is that only works where there are ships. In some of the meteorologically interesting places such as the poles are often shrouded in clouds and have few weather stations.

    The truth is that many points must be interpolated. Points closest to civilisation are quite good because there are enough measuring stations. This means that short-term weather forecasts are quite good (except in the UK, where they may be right but delayed or advanced by up to a day) but deteriorates over about three days and over a week or so is extremely difficult.

    Forget the calculations, if you don't have data points, you are just speculating.

    --
    See my journal, I write things there