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NNSA Supercomputer Breaks Computing Record

Posted by timothy on from the we're-simulating-a-stockpile dept.

Lecutis writes "National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Linton F. Brooks announced that on March 23, 2005, a supercomputer developed through the Advanced Simulation and Computing program for NNSAs Stockpile Stewardship efforts has performed 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second (teraFLOP/s) on the industry standard LINPACK benchmark, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world."

266 comments

  1. Neat by neccoant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's amazing that we were stalled at 50TFLOPS for two years, and are piling on the FLOPS now.

    1. Re:Neat by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the increased flops is simply a function of the fact that they are expanding the number of nodes.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    2. Re:Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think they were waiting for final specs on Doom3.

    3. Re:Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's obviously to meet the heavy system requirements of the new MineSweeper bundled with Windows 64 bits.

    4. Re:Neat by woah · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The reason is, of course, that we've been stuck with sameish desktop performance as well. Which correlates with supercomputer performance, since nowdays most of them use Intel/AMD processors.

      Just goes to show that Moore's law won't hold forever.

    5. Re:Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Yeah, remeber that last time the terrorists had control of the override and Jack Bauer had to get it back. Without Jack and that fat bastard Edgar we would all be in deep shit now.

      I guess after that happened they decided it was time for a computer upgrade.

    6. Re:Neat by imsabbel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are misstaken.
      We didnt STALL at 30Gflops, its just that the 30Gflops were SO much better than everything else available that it took a couple of years to catch up and overtake it.

      If you average over the last 10 years, the the Earth simulator was a bump above moores law and now we are back on track.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    7. Re:Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're back on track! We're back on track!

      Huuuuzaaah!

    8. Re:Neat by brsmith4 · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's not how linpack works. Sure, increasing your number of nodes will give definite performance advantages to course-grained, embarassingly parallel applications, but Linpack is not one of these applications. As well, Linpack should not be used as a guide for raw floating point performance, but is much better suited to gauge throughput.

      Linpack does its benchmarks using a more fine-grained algorithm, creating lots of communications for Message Passing to share segments of dense matrices for rather large linear systems. Not only is the number of nodes a factor, but so is the interconnect speed. If that cluster was using GigE for its interconnect, its Linpack benchmarks would not be nearly as impressive. Haven't RTFA but its likely that BlueGene/L is using Myranet or Infinband for its interconnect (or possibly a more proprietary backplane style interconnect, though that cluster is way too big for that).

      These latest generations of high-speed interconnects (esp. Infinband) have brought clusters closer to the point of being near shared-memory performance and hence is more of a throughput test than anything else.

      This description of the HPL benchmark (The "official" name for the Linpack benchmark) should provide some clarity as to how memory-dependent Linpack actually is:

      The algorithm used by HPL can be summarized by the following keywords: Two-dimensional block-cyclic data distribution - Right-looking variant of the LU factorization with row partial pivoting featuring multiple look-ahead depths - Recursive panel factorization with pivot search and column broadcast combined - Various virtual panel broadcast topologies - bandwidth reducing swap-broadcast algorithm - backward substitution with look-ahead of depth 1.

      http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/hpl/

      They took a lot of time to get Linpack to be less shared-memory dependent, like adding the swap-broadcast algorithm (which i'm fairly certain was absent in the old mainframe version of Linpack), to make it more "fair" to run on a cluster versus a shared memory set up. However, on a typical cluster, Linpack can push your interconnect pretty hard, esp. if you are stuck on GigE. However, Linpack has _lots_ of settings and parameters to "tune" the benchmark for your particular cluster.

      My point: Linpack/HPL is not an overall flops benchmark for a cluster. It measures the performance not only of double precision CPU performance, but also the performance of a cluster's interconnect.

    9. Re:Neat by JQuick · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually Intel compatible clusters in the supercomputer rankings are not all that compelling. True, linux cluster did fare very well for several years as measured by price/performance. Also it is true that about 63% of the top 500 supercomputers are Intel or Intel compatible.

      Despite this, the majority of systems at the top of supercomputer top 500 chart are based on the POWER architecture, not Intel chips.

      The POWER based systems, including BlueGene and PowerPC systems, are all much better on both price/performance, and Watt/performance basis. Intel chips do have a per chip advantage over PowerPC on many work-flows. However, when scaled, they directly consume more power, and indirectly require even more power to run higher capacity air conditioning.

      Looking at the top of chart reveals that Intel compatible systems are a small minority. In the top 10, as of November 2004, are one NEC, HP, SGI, Alpha, Xeon, and Itanium, and 5 members of the power family. IBM powers more than half of the top 100, with all other chip families dividing the remaining half.

      It is cheaper to build and operate a supercomputer cluster using either Apple or IBM gear (running either Macos X or Linux) than to do so using Linux on Intel these days.

    10. Re:Neat by imsabbel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, in fact the truth is a right in the middle.
      Linpack is VERY easy to parallize. Earth simulator and other vector machines get over 85% of their theoretical processing power with linpack, and even clusters with relatively abyssmal interconnects are still in the 50% range.

      Lots of computational problems need orders of magnitutes more inter-node communication, up to the point where linpack doesnt even matter anymore and clusters and vector computers with the same linpack score are a factor of 10 or 20 apart.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    11. Re:Neat by MyLongNickName · · Score: 1

      Just think how big of a minefield you can work with now!!!

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    12. Re:Neat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      "Blue Gene/L uses a federation of five different networks that were engineered specifically for this system. The networks are assembled in a modified hypercube configuration which is optimized for inter-rack communications as well as in rack messages."

      Straight from my notes during the product brief at Yorktown by George Chiu, Senior Manager, Advanced Server Hardware Systems Research Division

    13. Re:Neat by kayak334 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Myranet or Infinband

      Just some minor corrections and informaton for those interested.

      Myricom is the company, Myrinet is the protocol. Infiniband is an open protocol. Myrinet has a maximum speed of 2.2Gb/sec while Infiniband can scale up to 30Gb/sec on a 16x PCI-E card and a 12x port on the switch.

      As for what BlueGene/L uses, I don't think I'm at liberty to discuss that.

    14. Re:Neat by brsmith4 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Were you correcting my spelling? Because I always make that mistake (myranet... it's myrinet damn it!). You know what I meant though ;) It looks like BlueGene/L is using a hybrid backplane/hypertorus interconnect where a whole bunch of "machines" (more like system-on-a-chip) are connected via a backplane, then that case of "machines" is connected to another case in the same rack on some number of layers of interconnect. Then the racks are connected using some other protocol. Though you may not "be at liberty" to discuss this, the top500 site already disclosed an ample amount of information on the subject for any beowulfer to get the general idea of what type of interconnect topology/setup BlueGene/L is using.

      And I quote:

      The nodes are interconnected through multiple complementary high-speed low-latency networks, including a 3D torus network and a combining tree network. The physical machine architecture is targeted to be most closely tied to the 3D torus, a simple 3-dimensional nearest neighbor interconnect which is "wrapped" at the edges. An independent combining tree network provides for fast global operations, such as global max or global sum.

      http://www.top500.org/sublist/System.php?TB=2&id=7 101

      Enjoy.

    15. Re:Neat by kayak334 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, was just correcting the spelling in case anyone was trying to look up information on either of the two.

      Ah, yes, that website does go into a decent amount of detail. Thanks.

    16. Re:Neat by Tiosman · · Score: 1

      That's a common mistake. The current implementation of the Myrinet standard (yes, it's an ANSI standard) is 2.5 Gb/s signal rate with a 8b/10b encoding yielding 2 Gb/s data rate. You can aggregate links like on the E card (2X, 4 Gb/s). The basic Infiniband signal rate is also 2.5 Gb/s, data rate is 2 Gb/s. With 4X links, the signal rate is 10 Gb/s and the data rate is 8Gb/s. With 12x, data rate is 24 Gb/s (30 Gb/s is the signal rate).

      The next Myrinet product (Myrinet 10G) is using the same physical level as 10Gig Ethernet, with a 12.5 Gb/s signal rate and a true 10 Gb/s data rate. So actually, 10 Gigabit Ethernet has more bandwidth than 4X Infiniband.

      BTW, there is no 12X Infiniband NICs, it's only used for inter-switch links.

  2. Shit eating post by Fecal+Troll+Matter · · Score: -1, Troll

    Don't forget to brush.

    1. Re:Shit eating post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      FOSS sucks. Please get over it.

  3. and its only half the machine too! by rebelcool · · Score: 5, Informative

    wait till its fully online.

    --

    -

    1. Re:and its only half the machine too! by shadowsurfr1 · · Score: 1

      Holy shit. WTF are they going to use that kind of power for anyways?

    2. Re:and its only half the machine too! by shadowsurfr1 · · Score: 1

      Nevermind. Should've RTFA.

    3. Re:and its only half the machine too! by JPM+NICK · · Score: 2

      Scientists at LLNL for the first time have performed 16-million-atom molecular dynamics simulations with the highest accuracy inter-atomic potentials necessary to resolve the key physical effects to successfully model pressure induced rapid resolidification in Tantalum. As a shared resource, BlueGene/L has enabled scientists studying the effects of voids in metal failure at Los Alamos National Laboratory to perform standard accuracy molecular dynamics simulations with more than 2.1 billion atoms.

    4. Re:and its only half the machine too! by RicktheBrick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It would seem to me that with the great accuracy and concrete penetrating weapons that we possess that we could establish a future date when the United States would destroy all of our nuclear weapons. I believe that we could do this unilateraly. I believe we could wipe out all the leadership of any country that dared to launch an attack on our country and hopefully we will be able to intecept their missile before they reach our cities. I do not believe that we can morally tell anyone not to possess nuclear weapons unless we dedicate ourself to a date when we do not possess them too.

    5. Re:and its only half the machine too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      mutually assured destruction

    6. Re:and its only half the machine too! by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I do not believe that we can morally tell anyone not to possess nuclear weapons unless we dedicate ourself to a date when we do not possess them too.

      Then the solution is to immorally tell other nations that they can't have them. That way you have neither the stupidity of unilateral disarmament nor the stupidity of looking the other way on nuclear proliferation. I hope that this bit of Life 101 helps you out there.

    7. Re:and its only half the machine too! by way2trivial · · Score: 1

      to look at porn 30 thousand times faster than you or I can....

      --
      every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
    8. Re:and its only half the machine too! by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 4, Funny

      Easy cowboy, before you start proclaiming that we could wipe out all the leadership of an arbitrary country, let's just get Osama first. OK?

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
    9. Re:and its only half the machine too! by shadowsurfr1 · · Score: 1

      Haha. Nice one.

    10. Re:and its only half the machine too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck are you talking about? Concrete penetrating weapons? Are you fucking kidding me? You realize that there are underground installations maintained by multiple countries that the US is entirely incapable of destroying with anything in its arsenal. No, not even the "concrete penetrating weapons" will work. Sorry.

    11. Re:and its only half the machine too! by einhverfr · · Score: 2, Informative

      You have a point. Nuclear weapons were a heavily stabilizing force in the cold war because they made it impossible for any leader to consider all-out war with the other country. THings are more complex now, and nuclear proliferation is a different issue. Yet it is not a simple issue. On one hand, nuclear weapons continue to help prevent horrible war crimes like the firebombings of civilian population centers (Dresden, Tokyo) because it is simply too risky to do this. Yet they themselves are effective simply because they represent this risk.

      And the real risk is what happens if a group which is unbeholden to a public body, such as an international terrorist group, obtains such a device. They would be able to strike with one of these weapons but be immune to any counterattack.

      --

      LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
    12. Re:and its only half the machine too! by evilviper · · Score: 1
      I do not believe that we can morally tell anyone not to possess nuclear weapons unless we dedicate ourself to a date when we do not possess them too.

      Yes, just like the Police can't morally tell anyone not to posess firearms, unless they get rid of theirs as well.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    13. Re:and its only half the machine too! by InadequateCamel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I get your point, but I think that to describe this in terms of police is a little inaccurate because that really is the police's job. Perhaps this is closer to a heavily-armed civilian militia (I hesitate to say "Mafia" or "gang", but you could argue points there too) taking on the police role?

    14. Re:and its only half the machine too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The USA == The police? Thanks for clearing that up. But who is then the government legislating what the police can and can not do?

      Go on, say "the UN". I dare you.

    15. Re:and its only half the machine too! by dillon_rinker · · Score: 1

      I'm holding a gun; there's a pile of them on the floor in the middle of the room. Across the room from me are dozens of strangers. They eye me uncertainly. The one thing I know for certain is that I have no intention of shooting anyone.

      Unless they go for the guns.

      I tell them over and over again that I'm not going to shoot them. They call me immoral. They claim I want to kill them. They beg and weep and plead with me to let them pick up a gun. The one thing I know for certain is that I have no intention of shooting anyone.

      One of them edges toward the pile of guns. I raise my gun a few degrees; to reach the floor, she must pass in front of my barrel. She retreats. I could raise the gun another 45 degrees and drill a 9mm hole through her gut, but I don't. Again they scream and wail. Again they call me a murderer.

      Fifty years ago, I shot a man, once, twice. I can't say he deserved it, but he was trying to kill me. I stopped him. He survived. That was the first time I'd picked up a gun from the pile on the floor. I considered briefly drilling everyone else and winning the game, but I refrained. Instead I guarded the guns. I don't know what anyone else would do with a gun, but the one thing I know for certain is that I have no intention of shooting anyone.

    16. Re:and its only half the machine too! by dillon_rinker · · Score: 1

      I do not believe that we can morally tell anyone not to possess nuclear weapons unless we dedicate ourself to a date when we do not possess them too.

      We have dedicated ourselves to that date. On the date when there is no more threat to ourselves, we will lay down our weapons.

      I don't know if you've noticed, but the only country which has ever possessed the decisive ability to destroy or rule the entire world, AND HAS REFRAINED FROM DOING SO, is the United States. We could have nuked the capitals of any nation in the world in 1945 or 1946 without any possibility of retribution. We could have threatened every other nation with nuclear annihilation if they didn't accept our rule, but we didn't. We could have progressed beyond Germany to our sworn enemy Russia, but we didn't.

      Point to ONE other nation that can make a similar claim. Based on that history, I trust the people of the United States to do what is right. Have we committed terrible crimes? Yes. So has every other nation; we are no worse, but neither are we any better, save for this one point:

      WE DID NOT DOMINATE THE WORLD WHEN IT WAS WITHIN OUR GRASP TO DO SO.

      No other nation has the moral right to tell us what to do with our weapons. NO ONE.

  4. Yes, but ... by ggvaidya · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    is that faster than a speeding bullet?

  5. From the press release... by Zebra_X · · Score: 3, Informative

    This performance was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) at only the half-system point of the IBM BlueGene/L installation. Last November, just one-quarter of BlueGene/L topped the TOP500 List of the world's top supercomputers.

    Is there anything that will be able to touch this when it's complete?

    1. Re:From the press release... by Daniel+Boisvert · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The closest I've heard of is the Cray X1E, but even that only claims 147 TFLOPS.

    2. Re:From the press release... by Dr.+Weird · · Score: 1
      Is there anything that will be able to touch this when it's complete?

      Probably the sysadmins...

    3. Re:From the press release... by As+Seen+On+TV · · Score: 5, Informative

      The X1E isn't intended to be a fastest-in-the-world supercomputer. It's intended to be a low-cost scalable vector system. The fact that it's fast is great, but it's not its main design feature.

      Now, the X2, on the other hand, is a whale. They're talking 150 TFLOPS at roll-out next year (unimpressive) and 300 TFLOPS after the block 10 update the year after that (very impressive).

      Of course, the X2 isn't working yet, so who the hell knows. But it's fun to think about.

    4. Re:From the press release... by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      And thats in a hypothetical full version that nobody has ever build or bought...

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    5. Re:From the press release... by nmihaylov · · Score: 1

      "Is there anything that will be able to touch this when it's complete?"

      Yeah, e neighbourhood of kids playing on their Playstation 3, once they become available. Each box will perform 1TFLOPS (peak, single-precision). Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of those...

    6. Re:From the press release... by binarybum · · Score: 1

      but they'll have to wear gloves, I imagine this puppy will be hot.

      --
      ôó
    7. Re:From the press release... by convolvatron · · Score: 1

      actually its obscenely expensive. it was meant to be "best-of-breed". it just failed to be so.

    8. Re:From the press release... by As+Seen+On+TV · · Score: 1

      It's very cheap for a vector supercomputer. Entry-level systems start in the low five figures.

    9. Re:From the press release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently technicians have to touch it all the time. HEY! Wash your hands! That node is expensive, ya know! Now ya got cookies all over it!!!

    10. Re:From the press release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. Any ad-hoc network of more than 1,000 or so PlayStation 3s.

  6. Blue Gene? by eth8686 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Didn't IBM push Blue Gene to 180'something teraflops recently?? News story herer

    1. Re:Blue Gene? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably another benchmark/scientific program was run to achieve the different result.

    2. Re:Blue Gene? by EBorisch · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is Blue Gene. Read the article...

    3. Re:Blue Gene? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't IBM push Blue Gene to 180'something teraflops recently??

      Comments like this make slashdot suck. My comment on that comment sucking also makes slashdot suck. Thanks for taking initiative in making things worse around here.

    4. Re:Blue Gene? by Pedrito · · Score: 1

      Ah, thanks for clarifying. I thought it was Blue Jeans.

  7. AMazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Now we can make bigger and more efficient nuclear bombs. YEH!

    1. Re:AMazing by TheGavster · · Score: 1

      ... or safer and more efficient nuclear reactors.

      --
      "Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
    2. Re:AMazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... you can ask the chinese for those.

    3. Re:AMazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or the iranians, they got it from the chinese.

    4. Re:AMazing by mikael · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or we can model protein folding even faster.
      Run more accurate climate simulations even faster.
      Run population simulations even faster.
      Run CAD/CAM simulations even faster.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    5. Re:AMazing by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 1

      They bought them from the Canadians.

      --
      Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
    6. Re:AMazing by MHobbit · · Score: 1

      Or we can model protein folding even faster. The Folding@Home wars have begun! BlueGene versus the human race!

      --
      Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
    7. Re:AMazing by Richthofen80 · · Score: 1

      A small amount of logic would probably dictate that NASA is probably interested in modeling spaceflight stresses, or simulations of large parts of the universe, or large physical properties, like a supernova or black holes.

      --
      Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
    8. Re:AMazing by brsmith4 · · Score: 2, Informative

      A slightly larger dose of logic would tell you that NASA has nothing to do with this cluster, that it belongs to the NNSA or the National Nuclear Security Agency. They are probably more interested in testing new reactor designes or running simulations to demonstrate the effects of an aircraft crashing into one of their reactor domes (though I honestly believe that no one really believes that will happen).

    9. Re:AMazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They bought them from YOU.

    10. Re:AMazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be fair to the GP, that's not logic dosage deficiency so much as reading comprehension deficiency.

    11. Re:AMazing by Nintendork · · Score: 1

      I think the moderators need to RTFA before they mod you down.

  8. Wow by LiquidCoooled · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Minesweeper has never looked so fast!

    Or do nuclear scientists prefer solitaire?

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  9. imagine by dario_moreno · · Score: 3, Funny

    a Beowulf cluster of these !

    --
    Google passes Turing test : see my journal
    1. Re:imagine by OmgTEHMATRICKS · · Score: 0

      I, for one, welcome our new NASA overlords.

    2. Re:imagine by meza · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      1. Imagine a beowolf cluster
      2. Welcome our new overlords
      3. In Soviet Russia "3" is you
      4. ...
      5. Profit!

    3. Re:imagine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Korea, only old people use supercomputers.

    4. Re:imagine by ovit · · Score: 1

      All you need to do is read this 1 thread, and you can skip all future slashdot article discussions...

      --
      hard core geek-ware
    5. Re:imagine by sculpy · · Score: 1

      I wonder how fast fortune would run...

      --
      --John
  10. Wow! by FlyByPC · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just imagine running Fractint on this puppy!

    --
    Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
    1. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've never used Fractint, but my lowly 700 Mhz PC can render fractals in real-time with Xaos.

    2. Re:Wow! by simcop2387 · · Score: 1

      try doing some nice deep-zoom fractals like these with xoas in realtime

      http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/dz.html

    3. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fractals? I mean like, come on. Those are outfashioned now.

      How about real-time global illumination using photon mapping instead? Now that would be impressive.

    4. Re:Wow! by ucblockhead · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Heh. I guess I wasn't the only one who christianed a new machine by running fractint on it. Gave it up around 1998 because there was just no point.

      --
      The cake is a pie
    5. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why? Will it cure cancer?

    6. Re:Wow! by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 1

      Fractint used to make fractals on my 386 (with a 387 co-processor) almost instantly too.

    7. Re:Wow! by FlyByPC · · Score: 1

      With deepzoom, Fractint can still keep modern PCs occupied for days on end...

      --
      Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
    8. Re:Wow! by ozbird · · Score: 1

      These days, I christen new machines by performing a stage1 Gentoo installation. While not as pretty as Fractint, there's nothing like some serious code compilation to appreciate the performance of your machine (but life's too short to wait for OpenOffice.org to compile.)

  11. Steroids by tiktok · · Score: 4, Funny

    There was another machine that had already beaten that record, but unfortunately failed a diagnostic test for banned substances...

    1. Re:Steroids by Yaotzin · · Score: 1

      Was the banned substances by any chance Skynet in liquid form?

      --
      Error: No error occurred
    2. Re:Steroids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean banned substrates...

    3. Re:Steroids by puhuri · · Score: 1

      Like Watcom compiler on Dhrystone benchmark?

    4. Re:Steroids by Barryke · · Score: 1

      You mean planet Earth? (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)

      --
      Hivemind harvest in progress..
    5. Re:Steroids by PingPongBoy · · Score: 1

      If you want to break the rules, run the AC input at 120 Hz. This is overclocking from a declarative programming perspective.

      --
      Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
  12. Did you RTFA? by Donny+Smith · · Score: 5, Informative

    > has performed 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second (teraFLOP/s) on the industry standard LINPACK benchmark, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world."

    Did you read the fucking article?

    "This performance was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) at only the half-system point of the IBM BlueGene/L installation. Last November, just one-quarter of BlueGene/L topped the TOP500 List of the world's top supercomputers."

    See, this is the SAME supercomputer that has already topped the list last November, so the latest record did NOT make it the fastest supercomputer in the world.

    It already had been the fastest supercomputer in the world.

    1. Re:Did you RTFA? by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · · Score: 1

      Did you RTFA yourself? The /. summary is pretty much the same as the first paragraph of the article.

    2. Re:Did you RTFA? by madprof · · Score: 1

      OK so it is still the fastest computer in the world.
      Technically the description wsa accurate, however.

    3. Re:Did you RTFA? by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      OK so it is still the fastest computer in the world. Technically the description wsa accurate, however.

      Actually, technically the description was incorrect, as the term "making" requires that the subject initially not be what it was made into, i.e. not the fastest computer in the world.

      But yeah, this is all splitting hairs, and I should be ashamed of myself for even mentioning this...

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    4. Re:Did you RTFA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Remember that 'BlueGene' is a type of a computer...

      You can go to IBM and buy a rack of blue gene.

    5. Re:Did you RTFA? by madprof · · Score: 1

      If someone wins the "World's Strongest Man" title two years running you'd hear that they were 'made the champion again'.
      So this usage, even if it is technically incorrect, is still in keeping with what we may commonly hear.

      I need a life.

  13. It's so fast... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    that it almost meets the minimum requirements for Longhorn.

  14. all the spppppppppeeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    and I bet it just display % on the console :)

    Wondering the only game on that box is the ol unix dungeon and dragon game.

    1. Re:all the spppppppppeeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i bet this thing could ray trace unreal 3

  15. Re:imagine that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia, supercomputers cool you.

  16. Count On It by Doc+Ruby · · Score: -1, Troll

    We'll need that performance to track the lies from the DoE about nuke waste insecurity. And the lies from the NRC about current nuke storage insecurity. Good thing our tax dollars are spent so wisely that we now have the situation under control.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Count On It by Doc+Ruby · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Moderation -2
      100% Troll

      Trolls don't tell the truth, unlike my post. TrollMods don't like the truth, like my post.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    2. Re:Count On It by As+Seen+On+TV · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Trolls post off-topic shit in an effort to stir up an argument. Just like your post.

    3. Re:Count On It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mommy, mommy- I am trying to do my usual karma whoring but they are taking my karma instead. Straighten them out mommy. This is no fair. Do I have to get my daddy too?

    4. Re:Count On It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even karma whores have to be careful about what they post!

    5. Re:Count On It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Life is beautiful. Peace out.

  17. hmmmmm... by Rabid_Llama · · Score: 0

    kinda makes that 3.2 gh processor you thought was so fast piss its pants.

    1. Re:hmmmmm... by a1cypher · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Just for a point of reference, does anybody know how many floating point operations a 3.2ghz processor can do per seccond?

      I know its not 3.2billion because most micro operations take at least 3 or 4 clock cycles.

    2. Re:hmmmmm... by Yartrebo · · Score: 3, Informative

      With SSE instructions, you can process 4 floats at once, so I'm guessing that 3.2 GHz processor can do a few gigaflops.

    3. Re:hmmmmm... by Xoro · · Score: 1

      I know its not 3.2billion because most micro operations take at least 3 or 4 clock cycles.

      That used to be true, but with pipelining and parallelism you can no longer just divide the cycles per second by cycles per instruction and get instructions per second. Pipelining means that an operation does not have to finish before the next one is begun, and parallelism means that more than one operation can begin at the same time.

      So now, the answer is to basically look it up.

      --
      Kill, Tux, kill!
    4. Re:hmmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i remember reading something about the FP's on the P4 having no clock or atleast working ascycronusly

      so your 3 4 cycles might be true but there is no way of knowing how fast they were done

    5. Re:hmmmmm... by tgamblin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Depends on the problem and the memory performance as much as it does on the GPU. There's no good answer to that question. For kicks though, this paper has some measurements for matrix multiply using ATLAS. It's comparing a Pentium 4 to an NV40 GPU. The P4 wins at about 7 GFlops, and the NV40 loses due to horrible memory performance. That's pretty ironic considering that the NV40 has quite a few more FPU's, and that they're in parallel. It's a good example of why you can't ever say for sure how a processor's going to perform until you test it on a real workload.

    6. Re:hmmmmm... by Swedentom · · Score: 2, Informative

      An Apple Xserve G5 does 30+ gigaflops.

      --
      Sig Nature
    7. Re:hmmmmm... by fafalone · · Score: 2, Informative

      A 3.2GHz Intel Xeon processor performs 6.4gflops, but clock speed isn't the only determining factor.

    8. Re:hmmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that really true though? I don't know Intel but AMD implements SSE as 2 instructions at a time. They take 2 cycles to complete 1 SSE instruction.

      That means your peak flops on an Opteron 150 are 4.8 GFLOPS. And that doesn't count the integer ALUs and load/store operations that can occur in parallel as well.

    9. Re:hmmmmm... by As+Seen+On+TV · · Score: 1

      A PowerPC G5 running at 2 GHz churns out 8 GFLOPS, just for reference. I imagine the numbers of out an Intel-type CPU would be similar, but I don't know how the vector unit on an Intel-type CPU works --if at all --so I can't say for sure.

    10. Re:hmmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linpack isn't peak Flops, it is real-life flops. There is usually an order of magnitude difference between theoretical peak and LinPack peak.

      Here are some recent x86 CPU's and there LinPack results:
      http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/athlon64-fx55 /index.x?pg=3

      Athlon64fx55 Linpack peak: 1.3 GFlops
      Pentium4 XE 3.4Ghz Linpack peak: 1.3 GFlops

    11. Re:hmmmmm... by Eric+S+Raymond · · Score: 1

      apples to oranges....

      --
      Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
    12. Re:hmmmmm... by ABeowulfCluster · · Score: 1

      On the LHC project, One person's 3.4ghz does 1.4 gigaflops. but that's per cpu in a dual cpu machine. http://lhcathome.cern.ch/show_host_detail.php?host id=27742

    13. Re:hmmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A 600MHz Athlon does 2.4 GFlops peak, according to the datasheet.

  18. Wow. by TsukasaZero · · Score: 2, Funny

    Slap an X850 in there and you've got some serious Doom 3 action.

    1. Re:Wow. by jumbledInTheHead · · Score: 0

      Being that Doom isn't designed for parrallel processing it would probably run slower than your computer. Unless that was a joke, in which case I have no sense of humor.

    2. Re:Wow. by Professor_UNIX · · Score: 1
      Unless that was a joke, in which case I have no sense of humor.

      Ding ding ding, we have a winnaahh. Pick a cupie doll for the little lady.

    3. Re:Wow. by Triffid_Hunter · · Score: 1

      at that rate of flops, i think software rendering would be orders of magnitude faster :P

      --
      Handyboard Hackers' Resource Guide
    4. Re:Wow. by nsasch · · Score: 1

      Using the 'infinite number of monkeys' theory, this super computer could eventually develop the code for Duke Nukem Forever.

      --
      Make your computer faster: rm -rf /mnt/windows/
    5. Re:Wow. by zackeller · · Score: 1

      As long as it doesn't run MacOS.

  19. heh heh by Thaelon · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Imagine a cluster of these!

    --

    Question everything

  20. Is there anything that will be able to touch this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Is there anything that will be able to touch this when it's complete?"

    RoboSapien may elicit some emotional response...

  21. doom3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So am i still gonna have trouble playing Doom 3 on it?

  22. Yeah, but... by Black+Jack+Hyde · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...will it run NetHack?

    1. Re:Yeah, but... by Fjornir · · Score: 1

      Why bother when you can play Angband?

      --
      I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
    2. Re:Yeah, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because angband sucks.

  23. still not fast enough by ottawan · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This computer is still way too slow for things like studying molecular structure, even with simplified models.

    1. Re:still not fast enough by Frumious+Wombat · · Score: 1

      What sort of molecular structures are you thinking of? Klaus Schulten's people, (http://www.ks.uiuc.edu), are doing 100K - 1M atom simulations on workstation clusters, and people I know are modeling polymerization catalysts using quantum methods on clusters or fast desktops.

      Of course, if you're thinking of simulating a ribosome in action, then, yes, you're right. We'll need (estimated) exoflop machines for that.

      --
      the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
    2. Re:still not fast enough by ottawan · · Score: 1

      1. The large simulations are done with highly simplified physical models. 2. The 'real time' duration of the simulations is not long enough to compare to the vast majority of experimental science. Therefore, it is difficult to test the accuracy of the simplistic models used, or judge how valuable they are in our understanding of the details of the system.

  24. Earth Simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I rather miss the time when the world's most
    powerful supercomputer was used to study our
    planet. It was something to be proud of, actually.
    These machines are essentially weapons. Pity, that.

    1. Re:Earth Simulator by lp-habu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Historically, I'll think you'll find that a great many technological advances were made with the original purpose of killing other beings -- usually other humans. Seems to be one of the basic human characteristics. Pretty effective, too.

    2. Re:Earth Simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know, and given that we're aware of this (as
      opposed to unwittingly following instinct), doesn't
      it make it even more tragic?

    3. Re:Earth Simulator by ramblin+billy · · Score: 1


      Yeah, but you should have seen the shit the guys who got killed were working on.

      It's been said that a modern handgun represents close to state of the art technology in many fields and costs about a weeks pay. The Icon for human progress?

      billy - guns don't kill people - bullets do

    4. Re:Earth Simulator by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Even better, I can get two sticks and rub them togeather and create fire. It's not that hard to cause arson and burn down compleate houses or buildings and trap people in a firey hell.

      Fact is, death has always been cheap, and life is expensive.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    5. Re:Earth Simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Might be less work to just beat people with the sticks, provided they were big enough (the sticks, not the people you are clobbering). Handguns aren't state of the art technology, the most precision instrument in the home is most likely your computer's hard disk. Handgun technology is over 100 years old.

    6. Re:Earth Simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the piece of paper that Smith and Wesson wrote their first gun design on, that was also a weapon, was it?

      Tools, mate. Tools. Not "weapons". Not even "essentially" weapons.

  25. Link to the list by dnaboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    FYI the top 500 supercomputers list is maintained at http://www.top500.org/.

  26. More important issues by bogaboga · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I wish our government and scientists dedicated more work to more important issues IMO, like pollution, healthcare, deficits and the injustices of the world, government perpetuated or corporate. As I write this, I figure I might be un-employed soon, as my job gets out-sourced to Russia. In America alone, almost 50 million of our residents do not have any kind of healthcare. With all these facts, we then go round the world "preaching" fairness and prosperity.

    1. Re:More important issues by vhogemann · · Score: 1

      The irony is that all of that topics already have an solution... they're not put in pratice because of politics. Please, don't blame the scientists... blame the governament, or blame the people that elected the politicians that run your country!

      So instead of writing this on Slashdot, why don't you make a telephone call to you Senator? Why don't you gather people that think like you and tell it to him?

      If he got your vote, he might have a minute or two to listen what you has to say... You voted, didn't you?

      --
      ---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
    2. Re:More important issues by tgamblin · · Score: 5, Informative
      Despite the fact that BlueGene/L is being built to simulate nukes, this kind of research does impact some of these other issues, and there is government money going into them. Here are some examples... The National Center for Atmospheric Research uses supercomputers to simulate effects of pollution and global warming, and projects like LEAD are using grids with supercomputers attached to predict weather. Check out some of the projects at RENCI, as well. There's NIH-sponsored genetic research in addition to the weather stuff.

      It may be sad that we live in a world where nuclear weapons research is driving the computing power, but it doesn't mean that the power of BlueGene/L isn't going to be used for thousands of other peaceful scientific applications, too.

    3. Re:More important issues by bogaboga · · Score: 1

      The issue I have with this kind of reasoning is that even with the facts known, pollution especially goes on unabated! Our own president (Bush) chose to opt out of Kyoto. Meanwhile, some of our people are being found with diseases that were once unheard of just a few decades ago. Childhood diabetes is one, and what about juvenile cancer? The current research in fuel efficient vehicles and the like is driven not much by pollution, but by profits, when the price of oil reaches way up there. Who doesn't know this? Don't you?

    4. Re:More important issues by tgamblin · · Score: 1
      I never said that anyone would pay any attention to the research. You'll have to write your congressman for that. With the current administration in power I'm just happy that the research is getting done, so that maybe someone will notice it someday.

      I think that as long as we have the research going on actively, there's still some hope. Once people stop caring about even finding out, then we're in trouble.

    5. Re:More important issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      on /., one must never miss the opportunity to complain about the administration, throw more FUD around and generally make themselves appear the pompous ass. We salute you!

    6. Re:More important issues by McGiraf · · Score: 0

      '... the only way to keep capitalist industrial societies going was to have very substantial state intervention. The United States did it by getting the taxpayer to subsidize high-technology industries - of which weapons are a part.'
      -- Noam Chomsky

      Yep.

    7. Re:More important issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope.

    8. Re:More important issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go ahead. Go to sleep when the sun goes down. Don't drive anywhere. Or take the bus. Or fly. Turn off the TV. Stop buying shit. It's all energy, and you're wasting it!!!

      For God's sake, shut down your computer!!

      Or are you just a whining hypocrite?

    9. Re:More important issues by McGiraf · · Score: 0

      Yep. ;)

    10. Re:More important issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A little money buys more votes than bothering to listen to civilians. American politicians are hired by the corporations. Your country is run by money, for money. I would blame your system. Rampage capitalism, starting as a good economic system, absorbed politics and is now the single biggest threat to democracy. Its interests do not coincide with those of the people and environment, and they suffer.

      The spirit of democracy is strong in America, but the notion that, perhaps, it's deteriorating, rotting into a brave new Orwellian world should proliferate through many more people.

      Now, why should I be writing this on Slashdot, as an AC without karma points even? Because I'm an apathic, depressed cynic, I fear. And because I felt like it, and hope that it will make at least one person more critic on the structure of power in his country and the world, even if only to be better armed to dispell my dark thoughts.

    11. Re:More important issues by Dobeln · · Score: 1

      Ah - the standard "cynical" litany 1 A. How unimaginative.

    12. Re:More important issues by lostchicken · · Score: 1

      The problem with this sort of discussion is that in academia, when you have a huge collection of really smart people, intelligence isn't general purpose. I'm a computational engineering guy. That's what I do, that's what I'm good at. I'm not good at balancing budgets, I can't do chem worth shit, and politics is way, way beyond me. However, I can simulate stuff.

      A lot of my friends are math people. They do math. If the policy people need math, my friends will be there for them. They're good at math. I'm good at computational engineering. If you need something simulated, I can do that. We build computers. That's what we do. Rocket guys build rockets, math guys do math, and I build computers to simulate stuff.

      Money can be repurposed. People can't.

      --
      -twb
    13. Re:More important issues by blincoln · · Score: 1

      The issue I have with this kind of reasoning is that even with the facts known, pollution especially goes on unabated! Our own president (Bush) chose to opt out of Kyoto. Meanwhile, some of our people are being found with diseases that were once unheard of just a few decades ago. Childhood diabetes is one, and what about juvenile cancer? The current research in fuel efficient vehicles and the like is driven not much by pollution, but by profits, when the price of oil reaches way up there. Who doesn't know this? Don't you?

      Science can't change the minds of people who aren't willing to base their decisions on it.

      Most Americans don't know or care about things like atmospheric CO2 levels, electron orbitals, or thrust/weight ratios. They care about things that cause immediate emotional responses in themselves, usually from the media, and which are usually completely trivial in the big picture.

      Those are the people that elect our politicians, and so our government is made up of people who cater to that mentality.

      Unless that changes, US governmental decisions will always be made based on creating a desirable emotional response in that large constituency, or at least a good percentage of it.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  27. But.. by Mad+Ogre · · Score: -1, Redundant

    But you still can't play GTA SA on it.

    --
    MadOgre.com
    1. Re:But.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      who cares gta:sa sucks.

  28. You are not seeing the larger picture by ravenspear · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is the same flawed logic that people try to apply to NASA on here a lot, that we shouldn't send people to the Moon/Mars until we fix all the problems on earth.

    Halting scientific research to worry about all of our other problems is the wrong approach for many reasons. It is often scientific advances which lead to improved quality of life in many other areas of society.

    1. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But then why not apply those supercomputing
      capabilities to solve said problems...?

    2. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by ramblin+billy · · Score: 1


      What you say is true, but it's still kind of sad that we have to use the most powerful computer in the world to keep us from being contaminated by our own mess.

      billy - wondering where that damn genie left the cork THIS time

    3. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      But then why not apply those supercomputing capabilities to solve said problems...?

      Because hunger is not a MATH problem.
      Because civil wars are not a MATH problem.
      Because disease is not a MATH problem.

      There's only so much you can do with iterative models.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    4. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hunger? Supply and demand. If there isn't enough to go around, let them starve. They produced too many kids. Let them die.

      It is not our place to tell other countries to do what we want. (Despite what Bushtard thinks)

      Disease? That actually is a math problem. How do you think we figure out cures or vaccines? Simulations. How do we simulate things? Big-ass supercomputers running a shit load of math problems.

      Don't like it? Tough titties.

    5. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your post says nothing about how a political, social and logical problem ( hunger ), can be solved by throwing teraflops at it, nor do you have any coherent point about using supercomputers to solve civil wars, nor do you comprehend that this supercomputer set a record by simulating the effects of 16 million atoms, while an average cell contains 2.19 billion million*, so we are incredibly far off from being able to simulate even a tiny part of a cell. You'd best put down the bong, trade in the birkenstocks, take a bath, and do something constructive instead of bitching about how the world isn't exactly how you want it. Incidently, I'd advise the extremists on the right to do the same.

      *6.54*10^-8cm^3 * 1g/1cm^3 * (1/18)*6.02*10^23 atoms/g = 2.19 * 10^15 = 2.19 billion million

      Size of a cell ( 6.54*10^-8cm^3 ) from here
      http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/w3004/P roblem_set_2_answer.htm

    6. Re:You are not seeing the larger picture by Dun+Malg · · Score: 1
      How do you think we figure out cures or vaccines? Simulations.

      Hogwash. Name one vaccine that was discovered by iterative modeling. Nearly all work is still done by testing on actual live organisms.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  29. Dupe by karvind · · Score: 3, Informative

    Didn't we cover this before ?

  30. LINPACK usage? by Gleepy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think of LAPACK as being much more up-to-date for benchmarking.

    --
    Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
  31. This *is* Blue gene. by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Informative

    RTFA

    Or, at least the article's title:

    "NNSA Supercomputer Breaks Computing Record: Exceeds 100 TERAFLOPS DOE/NNSA and IBM partnership on BlueGene/L, a tool for national security"

    1. Re:This *is* Blue gene. by eth8686 · · Score: 0

      I know it is. But that article says 135' something teraflops while the one I point to says 180' something

  32. Human Intelligence? by kyle90 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Isn't the human brain supposed to be equivalent to a supercomputer running at about ~100 teraflops? And if so, shouldn't this computer be smarter than us?

    --
    Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
    1. Re:Human Intelligence? by astro-g · · Score: 1

      Maybe,
      but what working set does it have to work with?

      Its not loaded with the right software, or the right data to think like a human, even if the hardware is capable of performing the right kind of operations, at any usefull speed.

    2. Re:Human Intelligence? by agent2 · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. The speed of a system isn't completely related to the intelligence of a system. There are humans that think slower the other humans that are much more intelligent. So, speed helps, but the level of complexity isn't always related.

    3. Re:Human Intelligence? by Kethinov · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Isn't the human brain supposed to be equivalent to a supercomputer running at about ~100 teraflops? And if so, shouldn't this computer be smarter than us?
      In Star Trek TNG 2x09 Data was quoted at having a total memory capacity of somewhere around 90 petabytes with a total linear computational speed of 60 trillian operations per second.

      One would say this supercomputer is already more than twice as smart as Data!
      --
      You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
    4. Re:Human Intelligence? by trippy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Maybe so, but this thing is HUGE compared to Data. If Data were as large as this, the Enterprise would need a trailer to lug around his fat ass.

    5. Re:Human Intelligence? by BioCS.Nerd · · Score: 1

      I suppose that would depend on how one defined intelligence. I think that you could fairly accurately say that this computer has an equivalent or better ability to compute than the human brain. Even then, one has to wonder if computers have had a greater ability to compute things than the human brain for quite some time.

    6. Re:Human Intelligence? by Frumious+Wombat · · Score: 1

      Doesn't the beginning of Neuromancer start out with Case fretting over some chick stealing three megs of RAM from him? Maybe old shows should have a 'unit update' function built into the reruns, where anything involving computing will tack on another three orders of magnitude every few years.

      --
      the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
    7. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I first read it, I was upset about it, too...
      But think about how many terrorist plans you can fit on that in plain ASCII. You don't need anything more.

    8. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you could even cluster a few Datas, in case he'd ever run out of capacity...
      Seriously, I think there could be a lot of parallelization done. It's not even a novel idea to cluster something like human minds if you think of that part in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age..

    9. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not smarter, just twice more powerful.
      Data's probably got the better algorithms and today's research is far away from human-like intelligence.

    10. Re:Human Intelligence? by myukew · · Score: 2, Informative

      No. The human brain has about 10^11 neurons, each with about 1000 connections to other neurons. Every neuron can fire about 200 times a second. So scientists expect the human brain to have about 20 PFlop/s. Still a little faster than blue gene...

      --
      See pictures of tits
    11. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that Data is a half assed fictional rip off of a 19th Century character: Pinocchio. This is a real world machine.

      Bloody trekkies. Warp drives do not exist and Star Trek characters are not real. Do get a grip on reality.

    12. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps. It's already smarter than you. :-)

    13. Re:Human Intelligence? by linuxpyro · · Score: 1

      Speed wise, maybe. But it doesn't really do anything "human;" it's not set up to do that. Maybe if someone created the right AI algorithm...

      --
      Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
    14. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. It's design is basicly deterministic computer. It has no intelligence (not even artificial intelligence). It's basically a very very fast calculator. There are a vast number of problems (especially spacial) that are embarassingly parallel. Instead of dealing with one calculation at a time, it does 131000 calculations at a time. For it to be able to 'reason', it would need artificial intelligence software (much better than what we have now), and a neural-net design. It's design isn't that of a neural net. If you want an example of a successful neural net, look at the Berger-Liaw speach recognition system. It does 10,000 times better than the next best system (but *ahem*, the *ahem* U.S. Navy *ahem* too control of the project, and Berger and Liaw haven't been heard from since).

    15. Re:Human Intelligence? by Mahou · · Score: 1

      aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!! kill the heretic! kill him now!

      --
      if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
      ...te?
    16. Re:Human Intelligence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      This computer is smarter than you.

  33. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Yeah but can it run Linux? :)

  34. Unsafe at any speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its not loaded with the right software, or the right data to think like a human, even if the hardware is capable of performing the right kind of operations, at any usefull speed.

    Thinking machines...UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED!

  35. Sorry... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Imagine a BeoWulf Cluster of these!!!

  36. "working to reduce global danger from ..." by tyroneking · · Score: 0, Troll

    The NNSA "working to reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction"
    we'll be able to count all the WMDs in Iraq!
    Hooray!

  37. OK, let's get them all out of the way now by Gudlyf · · Score: 1
    • "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!"
    • "Imagine the Seti@Home rank on that puppy!"
    • "Pfft... A mere abacus -- mention it not!
    • "Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff!"
    --
    Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
    1. Re:OK, let's get them all out of the way now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot:

      And I, for one, welecome our new tera-flopped overlord...

  38. wake me up when we reach a petaflop by peter303 · · Score: 1

    All these increment "my computer is faster than your computer" articles are getting boring. I'll be interested in when they reach a petaflop. With "Moore's law" predicting a 10x speed up every five years, that should be around 2010.

    1. Re:wake me up when we reach a petaflop by McGiraf · · Score: 0

      Moore's law is about the doubling of the number of transistors not the doubling of speed.

      http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.ht m
      ftp://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespa per.pdf

    2. Re:wake me up when we reach a petaflop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What can you do with a PetaFLOPS that you can't do with 999 TeraFLOPS?

      Note the S on the end, btw. We'd reached a cumulative PetaFLOP by the 60s.

    3. Re:wake me up when we reach a petaflop by PingPongBoy · · Score: 1

      Come now. Don't you think having fans inspires supercomputer builders?

      One of the reasons there has been such a hiatus on moon trips is the lack of public interest. Results in research may be marginal, so patience is required. Enthusiasm is always useful.

      --
      Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
  39. energy consumption by russellh · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see a computing measurement unit for comparing how much energy it takes to perform those TFLOPS.

    --
    must... stay... awake...
  40. Human Intelligence is More than Speed by Ted+Holmes · · Score: 2, Interesting
    One of the landmarks we needed to pass in order for computers to approximate Human intelligence is the processing speed.

    Estimates are that the Human brain computes somewhere between 100 Teraflops and 1000 Teraflops,
    and Google was performing somewhere between 100 and 300 Teraflops. in late 2004.

    P.S. Since doing that bit of research, every time Google checks my spelling and responds with "did you mean..." the hair stands on the back of my neck :)

    But it's more than processing speed. It needs to have the software to do things like decision making, analysis, reasoning, evaluating, judging, information-organizing, learning, logic etc. which would normally require a human to perform.

    We're not far off though...

    --

    Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence

    1. Re:Human Intelligence is More than Speed by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      Even if google's combined network of PC's has 300 Teraflops, that does not make it a 300 Teraflops supercomputer, for some reasons. For example, the nodes are not connected by a fast network...

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    2. Re:Human Intelligence is More than Speed by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      The human brain has much more in common with that of a dolphins then in comparison to a computer. Yet, the way a dolphin thinks and understands is totally alien to us. Hence, we can't interact with them too well.

      That said, I expect computers to be self aware but in a way totally unlike us humans. In fact, they might already be self aware and we just can't see it at their logical level.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re:Human Intelligence is More than Speed by tuomoks · · Score: 1

      "It needs to have the software to do things like decision making, analysis, reasoning, evaluating, judging, information-organizing, learning, logic etc. which would normally require a human to perform." - a perfect political animal, sorry, computer. Missing the same qualifications.

    4. Re:Human Intelligence is More than Speed by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 1

      Hence, we can't interact with them too well.

      I leave that to my nets...

      --

      In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  41. Pretty Fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    It'll do an infinite loop in only 2.5 seconds.

  42. More Computer Power=Fewer Nuclear Explosions by Nova+Express · · Score: 4, Insightful
    To study the effects of different nuclear weapon designs, there are basically two approaches:

    1. Throw massive amounts of computing power at the problem (as done here), or:
    2. Actually set off a nuclear weapon.

    Having massive computing power in the hands of Lawrence Livermore scientists reduces or even eliminates the need for U.S. nuclear forces to actually detonate nuclear and thermonuclear explosions.

    Of course, some people would prefer to see the United States undertake unilateral nuclear disarmament, something they've been advocating since SANE/FREEZE was telling us we could trust the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Only today they claim we can trust Kim Il Jong and the mullahs of Iran more than the democratically elected government of the United States, just as they claimed we could trust Leonid Breshnev and Yuri Andropov more than we could trust Ronald Reagan. Their views are every bit as ill-conceived now as they were then.

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

    1. Re:More Computer Power=Fewer Nuclear Explosions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      as military can blow up earth a few times today it doesn't matter if they can blow it up a few more tomorrow.

    2. Re:More Computer Power=Fewer Nuclear Explosions by ozborn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Of course, some people would prefer to see the United States undertake unilateral nuclear disarmament, something they've been advocating since SANE/FREEZE was telling us we could trust the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Only today they claim we can trust Kim Il Jong and the mullahs of Iran more than the democratically elected government of the United States, just as they claimed we could trust Leonid Breshnev and Yuri Andropov more than we could trust Ronald Reagan. Their views are every bit as ill-conceived now as they were then.
      Nice strawman you've constructed, but pray tell who are these "some people" you are talking about? I challenge you to cite a single press release, webpage or publication by any independent NGO (even kooky ones) pushing for nuclear disarmanment that claims Kong Il Jong can be trusted. I can't think of any disarmament/peace group that would be opposed to 3rd party bilateral weapons inspections.

    3. Re:More Computer Power=Fewer Nuclear Explosions by Hao+Wu · · Score: 1

      What will happen when such computing power is available on a person's desktop in 20 years?

      --
      I suggest you read Slashdot
    4. Re:More Computer Power=Fewer Nuclear Explosions by Decimal · · Score: 1

      Only today they claim we can trust Kim Il Jong and the mullahs of Iran more than the democratically elected government of the United States

      Right! Because the majority of people are reliably smart enough to elect competent leaders.

      (Not that I think *anybody* should have a nuke, mind you)

      --

      Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
  43. So what! by pwnage · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It still takes this machine 3 minutes to boot into Windows XP.

    --
    Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
  44. At last... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...a machine tht can boot Longhorn in less than a minute.

  45. DOE's Senior Activity Center by Animats · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The "stockpile stewardship program" is basically a senior activity center for retired physicists. They have busywork projects to keep people thinking about how to design nuclear weapons. DOE is worried that all the old bomb designers will die off, and no new ones will replace them.

    Remember, everything in the inventory was designed with far less compute power than today's desktops.

    1. Re:DOE's Senior Activity Center by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is pure BS. However, there is a grain of truth in your post, your use of the word stewardship. The DOE needs massive amounts of computing power to ensure the stability and usability of the weapons we have, or else we'd have to go back to actually detonating them.

    2. Re:DOE's Senior Activity Center by T5 · · Score: 2, Informative

      DOE's stewardship program is not for retired scientists, but current ones. The laboratory directors at the nuclear labs (Sandia/LLNL/maybe others) are required to certify the stockpile as being ready to go each year. Their supercomputers are the only way to test the aging stockpile without actually detonating a few to see which designs age better than others.

      And let's remember that almost everything in the current arsenal was designed and actually tested, not just worked up via computer. It takes a whole lot more computing power to run the thermodynamic and nuclear codes for simulation than it does to validate designs.

    3. Re:DOE's Senior Activity Center by BitchKapoor · · Score: 1
      T5 wrote:

      DOE's stewardship program is not for retired scientists, but current ones. The laboratory directors at the nuclear labs (Sandia/LLNL/maybe others) are required to certify the stockpile as being ready to go each year. Their supercomputers are the only way to test the aging stockpile without actually detonating a few to see which designs age better than others.

      And let's remember that almost everything in the current arsenal was designed and actually tested, not just worked up via computer. It takes a whole lot more computing power to run the thermodynamic and nuclear codes for simulation than it does to validate designs.

      I've worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and T5 is right on the money. The huge ASCI and NNSA machines are for monitoring and predicting the state of these very dangerous weapons we've stockpiled, not really for designing new ones. Even if you don't like the idea of nuclear weapons (or any weapons, for that matter... wars cause terrible suffering), the fact of the matter is that they exist, and we need to do all we can to keep our eyes on them and understand how their properties change as they age. From a social perspective this isn't all that different from monitoring the weather or asteroids in order to avoid catastrophes. It is rather fortunate that the nuclear weapons facilities are managed by the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense; this was a conscious choice by careful people back at the dawn of the nuclear age to safeguard the world from the threat of U.S. military overzealousness.

  46. Wow, that's ALMOST enough... by fzammett · · Score: 1

    ...to FINALLY have working voice recognition! :)

    Now for the obligatory...

    * Now imagine a Beowolf cluster of these!

    * This would make a hell of a MAME PC!

    * Windows will finally boot up in under five minutes!

    * Any Java GUI app would STILL run like a dog on this!

    Did I miss any??

    --
    If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
    1. Re:Wow, that's ALMOST enough... by ch3 · · Score: 1

      Maybe

      * finally we can compile gentoo in less than one week

  47. all good by jlebrech · · Score: 1

    thats all fine but does it run doom 3. and whats the framerate? shouldnt computers be measured by the fps and not flops.

  48. Key cracking possibilities by JoaoPinheiro · · Score: 1

    Hmmm... I wonder how long it would take this puppy to crack my 4096 Diffie-Hellman/DSS PGP key...

    --
    João Pinheiro
  49. But... by pbaer · · Score: 1

    Can it play Doom 3 on the highest settings?

    --
    There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
  50. Can we qualify this a bit? by Moderation+abuser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "making it the fastest supercomputer in the world"

    Or rather the fastest supercomputer with published LINPACK results. There are a number of reasons that agencies with supercomputers might not want to publish results.

    --
    Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
    1. Re:Can we qualify this a bit? by quark101 · · Score: 1

      Like maybe the NSA? Or the 15 or so super-secret organizations that don't officially exist?

    2. Re:Can we qualify this a bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which 15 are those?

    3. Re:Can we qualify this a bit? by lampajoo · · Score: 1

      Or your mom?

  51. What is the "larger picture"? by tester_bob · · Score: 1
    I think that ravenspear ends up using the same "flawed logic" that he criticizes. Of course, it is true that scientific advances lead to an improved quality of life, sometimes. They also make possible things like mass genocide in the holocaust. Not to reiterate a point that seems blindingly obvious, but technology is a tool, and it is employed by humans, for "good" and "bad."

    What we need to realize is that this "good" and "bad" is also a product of relations of power in society. Therefore we have to study societal structures; how they result in a certain way of thinking that produces technological "innovations," and how these innovations in turn are deployed by us and according to our understanding of what is good or bad.

    To sum up, the "bigger picture" is not that sometimes technology can be good, but that good and bad itself is a thing of this world. If there is a mistake in logic that is made all too-often, it is trying to evaluate technology in itself rather than focusing on these social structures and how it shapes our understanding of technology and ourselves.

  52. The real question should be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is it finally fast enough to catch all the new windows virus ?

  53. You break it by EachLennyAPenny · · Score: 1

    then you have to fix it. No supper until that.

  54. Well, actually,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It beat GWB and his entire staff some time ago. Now, the computers are simply trying to get up to 100 IQ. Perhaps in the next couple of years.

  55. ONLY 135.3 trillion floating point operations ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bah!

    No where near Deep Thought's Massive Powers!

  56. 135.3 trillion floating point operations per seco by alex4u2nv · · Score: 4, Funny

    135.3 trillion floating point operations per second

    Does this mean we can't slashdot it?

    --
    -Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
  57. The truth rings loud and clear by DigiShaman · · Score: 0, Troll

    Thank you!! What you said is so true. But, I expect you get modded down or even a troll due to the communistic hivemindset of the slashdot crowd.

    I do hope I'm wrong on my prediction through.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  58. yes, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...can it run longhorn ?

  59. You of course know what this means. by Allnighterking · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can now open a Mozilla session in under a minute!

    --

    I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.

  60. Why it's fast: by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1
    135.3 trillion floating point operations per second (teraFLOP/s) on the industry standard LINPACK benchmark, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world

    Microsoft just announced that NNSA is the fastest because it uses the upcoming version of Microsoft Office XP 2005, which offers faster startup times and a talking paperclip optimized for modern processors.

    1. Re:Why it's fast: by SA+Stevens · · Score: 1

      Microsoft themselves, at the Office 2000 launch, made fun of 'Clippy' with a 'Clippy is Dead' segment of the presentation. There are a whole handful of 'help agents' now.

      Can't you progress beyond your old hatred of Office 97??

  61. the NNSA also developed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most of you are not aware that the NNSA has also developed a security enhanced version of the linux kernel.

    It's known as SSElinux.

  62. Googles "Super Computer" by PhaxMohdem · · Score: 1

    I wonder if Google has ever Linpack'd its clusters to get some idea of the computational power driving their services. I would imagine it would rank pretty high. Here is a tidbit from an article I found...


    "Assuming that the 1Ghz chip is going at about a third the gigaflops of a 2Ghz processor (3.3Gflops), we can then guess at the size of the Google supercomputer. Just for the sake of argument, let's go with 1 Gigaflop per processor. This means that the Google supercomputer has about 189 teraflops of power on the low end of my estimates, 253 teraflops on the middle end, and 316 teraflops on the high end. This would easily put it on top of the list of fastest computers in the world."

    http://www.addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle &type=news&ID=1893

    --

    The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.

    1. Re:Googles "Super Computer" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some stats on Google's system based on an April 2004 IPO analysis. Although these may be estimates, it looks like Google's power is pretty impressive.

    2. Re:Googles "Super Computer" by rebelcool · · Score: 1

      at machines that size IO is one of the huge limiting factors. just because your processor is capable of .3 tflops doesnt mean if you somehow lash a bunch together you're going to get x*.3 tflops.

      these systems need pretty specialized custom designed IO to achieve their speeds and thats where the interesting things happen. the processors themselves are pretty ordinary.

      --

      -

  63. Blasphemer! by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 1

    you are to be sentenced to use Windows ME for all eternity

  64. OK then... by caveat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How 'bout we use Blue Gene for climate modeling, and start setting off full-yield nuclear tests to insure the viability of the stockpile? I don't terribly like the idea of nukes, but the genie is out of the bottle and there's no stuffing it back in - we need to have the things, and if god forbid we ever have to use them, I'd like to see them work properly. Seriously...unless you use one of the interconnect cables to garrote somebody, these computers are hardly "weapons", quite the opposite in fact.

    --

    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:OK then... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In what way is the current stock not "viable"?
      It seemed to be doing exceedingly well with
      the previous computational power.

      But no, you are right, the genie is out of
      the bottle, it's too bad, make more nukes, these
      computers aren't weapons (they're the opposite
      for crying out loud!!), go buy a PSP and live
      happily ever after.

    2. Re:OK then... by Admiral+Burrito · · Score: 1
      we need to have the things, and if god forbid we ever have to use them, I'd like to see them work properly.

      Indeed. It would suck if we were to only wipe out part of the human race. What would be the point of that? Worse still, with all the destruction from the ones that do go off, it could take thousands of years to set up another attempt at armageddon.

      It's kinda like that time I was playing russian roulette. I noticed the "click" had a different sound to it than usual, but the damn thing didn't go off! I was playing russian roulette with a dud cartridge! I was so pissed off...

    3. Re:OK then... by caveat · · Score: 1

      You just don't seem to be getting it - the whole purpose of these systems are to model the detonation of a weapon with aged, possibly deformed or otherwise bad components...so we DON'T have to make more nukes. I got pretty well acquainted with some people in the stewardship program during my stint at Brookhaven, and while they are doing some wacky shit like fast-proton imaging of the shock wave from the HE lenses of an old bomb (no fissile material of course), the simulations are still the primary method of pseudo-testing.

      Oh, if you don't understand why the current stockpile might not be capable of detonating, you don't know enough about weapons to be participating in the discussion. Google for the High Energy Weapons Archive and read up...knowledge is power.

      --

      Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
    4. Re:OK then... by Detritus · · Score: 1

      Deterrence only works if the threat is plausible. That means that potential enemies have to believe that we are willing and capable of delivering functional weapons on target with a high probability of success. Whatever you do to us, we will still be capable of turning your country into a radioactive wasteland.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  65. NSA has something better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When I worked at the NSA (I'm free to say this now because I live in Canada), I often heard the IT guys talking about how the supercomputer we used for sorting and decrypting telecommunications was faster than the ones they used at NASA, and a new cluster was in the planning stages to exceed 200 TFLOPS.

    This was back in 2001.

    I really have a strong feeling the NSA is still ahead of NASA on this one, but they don't publish information about their clusters... for obvious reasons.

    1. Re:NSA has something better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what exactly does NASA have to do with the NNSA?

    2. Re:NSA has something better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh yeah? Good for them. But the U.S. Secret Service is high on the heels of the NSA where cracking is concerned:

      http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/ 28/2026226&tid=172&tid=198&tid=103

  66. Re: 135.3 trillion floating point operations per s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nah, it's just on a standard cable line, after blowing all that money they had to go cheapo on the connection.

  67. Sure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The supercomputer that will one day beat it, then the supercomputer that beats that... etc.

  68. The belly of the beast by theufo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here's an article describing some of the specs.

    http://www.llnl.gov/asci/platforms/bluegene/talks/ gupta.pdf

    It's from the days when BlueGene/L was still relatively small, but the basic design hasn't changed since then.

    Turns out it's split into I/O and computing nodes. The 1024 I/O nodes run Linux. Each controls 64 dual-cpu nodes, which use simplistic microkernels written from scratch using Linux as an example.

    The network architecture sounds funky: apparantly it's based on a torus!

    1. Re:The belly of the beast by convolvatron · · Score: 1

      funky? torus? torroidal meshes are as old as the hills. meshes dont have any very interesting properties, except that they have a straightforward mapping into large machines laid out in a grid.

      hypercubes are nice, but the wiring gets messy at scale

      clos gets you log hops for arbitrary base, and simplified routing.

  69. that's ok but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does it run Linux?

  70. Where it really matters. by FoolishBose · · Score: 1

    But more importantly, what's it 3dmark score?

  71. You Gotta Love This... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 2, Funny
    Scientists at LLNL for the first time have performed 16-million-atom molecular dynamics simulations with the highest accuracy inter-atomic potentials necessary to resolve the key physical effects to successfully model pressure induced rapid resolidification in Tantalum.

    You just gotta love a sentence like that!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  72. Wrap up obligatory jokes... by elgatozorbas · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these. That would meet the minimum system requirements for Longhorn. If not, does it run Linux? At least you can compile Gentoo in under a week...

    1. Re:Wrap up obligatory jokes... by peter+stayne · · Score: 1

      Don't forget the canonical 'how many fps in [insert 3d game/benchmark here] would it get?'

    2. Re:Wrap up obligatory jokes... by Gamer12345 · · Score: 1

      does this mean that quake 3 will support more then 8 players? Such a change would bode better for the human race, as videogames are truly becoming the next best drug for the masses. People would come together just like in that book, the Comet. Wars would cease to exist, China would put welcome mats at its borders, etc.. etc..

  73. FINALLY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now I can run Half-Life 2 without the stutterbug!
    Oh wait...

  74. Some sites listed by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

    I'm sure everyone can agree that N. Korea is a clear-and-present danger.

    However, according to the lastest poll in late May, most of Europe does not see Iran as a threat. I'm not sure if this poll was conducted before or after the 30+ reporters got access to underground facilities where they were shown 50,000 (yes, fifty bloody thousand) certrifuge rods to process the fuel into bomb making matrial. Obviously, Iran did not say they would make a bomb...but lets just lay the cards on the table and let facts speak for itself. The answer is rather obvious. And as an American, it scares me to hear members of Iran political parties chant "Death to America".

    Sites below.

    http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/30/iran.pol l

    http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=7768

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1374229/p osts

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:Some sites listed by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 1

      I do not regard Iran as harmless. However, they have been given a highly convincing demonstration of the dangers of not having weapons of mass destruction. When the US attacks your next door neighbour and then more or less announces that you are a top candidate to be next, it is understandable that you want a deterrent.

    2. Re:Some sites listed by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Deterrent? I doubt it. More like war by proxy. an ICBM from Iran is not what I fear. What I DO fear is them selling a basic fissionable bomb to Al-Queda and having someone import it into the US. From there, all it will take is someone to drop it in the back truck of a car or truck. Then, drive downtown to "name-your-city".

      What do you know. A nuclear car bomb. The first of it's kind and well withen reach of the most evil of people.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
  75. Linear vs Parallel by Namarrgon · · Score: 1
    Not to nit-pick, but...

    a total linear computational speed of 60 trillian operations per second

    BlueGene/L is highly parallel, yes? What speed can just one of its processors do?

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  76. Tin foil hats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In other news ... sales of tin foil have sky-rocketed.

  77. Finally Beat SETI@Home by billstewart · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Yes, I know that SETI@Home is actually running simpler problems than LINPAK, but it's still frustrating that the fastest computer in the world is being used for evil. Until this computer, the fastest computer in the world was a volunteer effort searching for space aliens using screen savers. Last November's numbers had the Blue Gene at 71 TFLOPS, which might have been faster than SETI (SETI's currently at 56 TFLOPS; I'm not sure if that's a decline or increase from last fall, given the number of people who have switched over to Folding@Home, various cancer-fighting applications, etc., vs. people who've gotten faster computers.) Number 2 was at NASA AMES, so it could have been working for good or evil applications, and Number 3 was the previous champion Earth Simulator, which is on the good side.

    I'm currently running Folding@Home...

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  78. Re:hmmmmm... [winhat] by winhat4 · · Score: 1

    2 + 2 = 4.

    2 + 2 = 4.

    Orville wright was an english writer. He wrote nineteen eighty four and animal matter.

  79. North Korea? by billstewart · · Score: 1
    North Korea's government is primarily a clear and present danger to its citizens, who are suffering from severe poverty because it's a blatantly incompetent personality cult who keeps them from farming or trading successfully. Sure, its leaders occasionally say "Booga booga booga!" to the world just so someone will take them half-seriously - it helps keep the peasants in line. It's possible that some day they'll decide they have to actually nuke Seoul to keep themselves in power, but they do know that they'll be pounded into little bits of probably-radioactive dust if they ever try it, so it's at most a total desperation move.

    Now, they're sufficiently wacko that that that's not an impossibility, but the real threat to them isn't military - it's that the US, South Korea, or Japan might just start air-dropping handheld TV sets on them and let them see the propaganda that modern industrial commercialism puts out for their markets (government propaganda directed at the North Koreans would probably be less effective - random Korean MTV with restaurant and grocery store and clothing commercials tends to be the really devastating stuff for communist regimes.)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  80. what about... by torrents · · Score: 1

    the one that they're not telling us about... how many teraBOPS can that 1 do...

    --
    Get your torrents...
  81. Safety and Reliability by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 1

    Speaking of evil... From the press release: "ensuring the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal" They don't mention, in these press releases, how they have redefined the words "safety" and "reliability". In their usage, "safety" is defined as "it really will pop when you press the button", and "reliability" is defined as "it really will demolish as much as it's rated to demolish". This is a neat bit of Orwellianism on their part. Everybody likes safety, right? But nothing in the charter, under their interpretation, says that it's their job to make sure they don't leak, or pop by accident, or vanish mysteriously, despite that any normal person would assume that from reading it.