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IBM's Blue Gene powered by Linux
bigjnsa500 writes "Linux will be the main operating system for IBM's upcoming family of 'Blue Gene' supercomputers--a major endorsement for the operating system and the open-source computing model it represents. Blue Gene/L, the first member of the family, will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory. Due in 2004 or 2005, the system will be able to perform 200 trillion calculations per second. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations." Blue Gene has been announced for some time, but it's cool to see how it's shaping up.
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The referenced article is dated October 2002. Is this a mistake, or is this old news?
Anyhow, going to the Blue Gene web page, there is a document dated Nov 2002, an overview of BlueGene/L. An excerpt:
The approach we have adopted is to split the operating system functionality between compute and I/O nodes...
The compute node operating system, also called the BlueGene/L compute node kernel, is a simple, lightweight, single-user operating system that supports execution of a single dual-threaded application compute process...
I/O nodes are expected to run the Linux operating system, supporting the execution of multiple processes. Only system software executes on the I/O nodes, no application code.
Historically, the modern reason for computer simulation of nukes is to put a stopper in the nuclear proliferation genie. The logic is convoluted but sensible. The idea is that first you get a test ban treaty. Second, You offer economic and power production aid to all countries that dont develop nuke engineering or let you control their plutonium bearing nuke waste.
this creates a situation where nuke weapon engineering has to be done either in secret (since there no civial reactor technology to produce plutonium) or if done overtly, they still cant test their weapons. Neither can we.
this leaves everyone in a delightful position of 1) not being perfectly certain their nukes will work when delivered. thus they are not good offensive weapons. (imagine what would happen if pakistan launched on india and it were a dud).
2) yet they still make good defensive weapons since even though its not tested it doesn;t mean it wont work.
which is sort of nice. it discourages both developement and first use. world is MAD but better off.
Unfortunately the US would never go for this if they did not have a way of testing their own weapons. So they do it in silico rather than in nevada. This allows us the political will to go through with this. a better world results. THe clock is ticking. we know the weapons will work now but they are aging.. will they work in say ten years. THis is where computer simulations come in. within ten years we should be able to model nukes and nuke aging on one of these machines at a level that gaurentees our readiness. or maybe if this test ban thing works we can just scrap them all in ten years.
that was the plan. But now with about 30 countries with potential nuke development capability this plan maybe about to break down. thus we go to plan B.
plan B is we use these big computers to design new reactors that dont produce plutonium. We sell these to the countries. now they can have nuke power without creating weapons grade plutonium. Again every body happy.
except of course N. Korea.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.