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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.
kidding aside, are these based on the novel IBM design for having small clusters of wimpy processors sharing sections of memory. The concept being to have each processor running slowly, almost stalled waiting on a memory fetch. (while seeming stupid at first glance, its really diabolically clever since now you can junk all the long pipelines and branch prediction stuff: every single byte that comes from memory will be used by some CPU requesting it, thus you minimize the memmory buss buttle neck that is, ultimately, the limit on most processing).
if this is that design then that 65,000 processors indeed may not be quite as much computing horespower as it sounds. it might indeed be comparable to a smaller handful of G5s.
or maybe i'm full of crap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Somewhere, there's an open source developer who's just realized that his work is being used to the development of nuclear weapons. All jokes about derivative works aside, I think it's a good time to consider the implications of this.
That goes on the pile with those other questions like why do the US and Russia still have thousands of missiles pointed at each other a decade after the cold war thawed? Why is the nuclear briefcase still following the President around and why are missile pointed at Russia still ready to launch with 2 minutes notice? Wasn't there an issue a couple of years back where the Russian President activated his nuclear briefcase on what turned out to be a false alarm?
I guess if you're going to maintain a nuclear "deterrent", you have to keep it up to date. Especially if your government has a nuclear first-strike policy. The comprehensive no test ban means simulation is the only option left.
In reading up on ASCI White I seam to remember that the Nuclear weapon simulations they run take 30 days each to complete, and that the same simulation run on the previous generation super computer would take over 60,000 years to run. That is some SERIOUS MATH.
We never left that era. There have always been $10 million+ supercomputers that fill up rooms. They went incognito during the 90s as datacenters, but they have always existed. It's just they take a bit of a different name now.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the system for performing nuclear weapons simulations.
I commented on a similar previous corporate welfare handout where IBM was producing some software to mimic the human brain or some crap like that...to the tune of around half a billion dollars.
This is yet another such example...Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is "operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy" This is yet another example of the public subsidizing hech tech industries, specifically IBM but it happens for others as well.
When are enough people going to stand up and put a stop to this bullshit so that we can use our money for much better use? Or better yet, when is the public going to be involved in deciding for themselves which projects get priority and how they are to be run?
And our government has the nerve to lecture others on how to run a democracy!
So they do it in silico rather than in nevada
This is the best latin quote I have ever seen.
It will be the exact same thing here. Do you really think IBM isnt paid huge amounts of money for this work? They are doing research here; they are making priceless experiences - and they are paid for it. The public is paying the research; the company will make the profit. It is always working like this.
Why do you think that any sane being would invest money for more and more powerful nuclear weapons? Because we need them? Bullshit. It happens because money is spent and some make profit for doing research. That is the reason. The only reason.
I just love it when someone writes an article, and doesn't know hot to put it into words people can understand.. So they come up with this jackass "it's a million billion!" shit.
16 trillion bytes of data = Approx 15 terabytes.
What the hell is so hard about saying "15TB" ?
Bowie J. Poag
Actually, Blue Gene is being built to simulate protein folding if I remember correctly. Sure, it could be used for other purposes, but so could any computer. The project you may be thinking of is called ASCI White . Here's the ASCI project (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative).
Move on. There's nothing to see here.