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Army Contractor To Build A 1566 Xserve Cluster
olePigeon (Wik) writes "MacCentral has an interesting article on a new computer cluster. From the article: 'Apple Computer Inc. will announce on Monday the sale of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers to COLSA Corp., which will be used to build what is expected to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The US$5.8 million cluster will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the U.S. Army.'" alset_tech was one of the many readers to point to
CNET's version of the story.
ther is no chance of reinstating the draft. one, the public is not supportive of it. two, there is no need. we will never have a million men in the field again. third, the army doesn't want it. long time ago, it used to damn near impossible to get out, now, it's not too hard. they classify you as unfit for military life, and say have a nice life. look at what the army is doing in iraq. those aren't conscripts. even if you think bush is satan, what we are doing has never been possible, nor accomplished before. and conscripts won't do that.
the often overlooked issue in abu ghraib is that they were reservists and some civi contractors. the army and air force have been doing this for some time now. farming things out to reservists and civilians. there will be no draft. we need 2 more divisions. those can accomplishged within normal recruitment.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I've don't know if you know anyone over there, but tours of duty in Iraq for almost all troops have been extended, for some multiple times. Clearly they're running kinda thin on troops, if we need a major deployment elsewhere....
From USA today
The 1st Armored Division, which arrived in Baghdad in the first week of May 2003, spent most of the past year in and around the Iraqi capital. Then, just as the division's 20,000 troops were about to head home, they were ordered to race south to counter the bloody insurgency of renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia. The Pentagon extended the division's tour by 90 days, until mid-July.
i think the code could exist at sub-100Tflop speeds... whether it be text I/O only, but that is still highly powerful. Lets get THAT AI working(and plug it into some big IRC Channels, for it to 'grow' at light speed!!) and the 100Tflop goodness will come later.
A 10,000 dollar grant or donation from IBM, Intel, AMD or HP could give the server box needed to run a system of that power.
Off-topic, and feeding a flaming troll, but I can't resist...
No public healthcare yet defense contracts like this aren't a big deal?
If you break your arm and walk into any Emergency Room in the country, you'll be provided with medical care, regardless of whether you can pay or not. That's the law.
And if your medical system serves your citizens so well, why do many of the wealthier ones come down here when they need to get the best treatment? It's not just Canada, though... from all over the world people fly in from their wonderfully "progressive" state-run health care systems at home to be treated by our "horrible" and "broken" health care system or specialists here in the States. Actions like these speak louder than words and posturing.
The (some would say, overpriced) $120/month that I (or my employer) pays for my Calif. Blue Cross PPO plan helps pay for R&D for everyone else (in the US and abroad). And you know what?... I'm okay with that.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
railguns.
dont make me break out the johnny pnemonic quotes.
That's a recent phenominon as a result of a foreign private interest looking to have public healthcare de-regulated. Much of what was publically funded before has become private so the system as it exists here in Canada presently is in transition. Over the last term of provincial government the public system was large dismantled in a effort to make it appear broken. Yet despite a reduciton of 6 billion dollars in funding healthcare here still works. The majority of people going to the USA were getting medical imaging done not major surgeries. Even in the USA diagnostics and imaging are expensive.
I wrote this post in haste orginally and apologise for the tone. To clarify witout getting too much further off topic private and public systems of healthcare tend not to co-exist well in the Canadian experience. For us in the industry it's well known that the influence from the US is a major political power even here. It makes us awfully resentful when companies from abroad railroad us by pressuring government to further cut funding in the face of increasing demand. Well of course we're going to start failing. Then to see the US defense budget as a blueprint for my country to come? No wonder we're more resentful than ever of our neighbours to the south. Our sovereignty has always been regarded as some sort of quaint and primitive custom.
_nfotxn