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Largest Privately Owned Supercomputer

Posted by timothy on from the beats-the-basement-beowulf-rack dept.

GORMUR writes "IBM has launched its Watson Blue Gene system, the largest privately owned supercompuer seen by the press. The super computer is described reaching a whopping 91.29 teraflops. IBM has plans on giving Academic researchers access to some computing time. Some more info can be found the IBM site. All this makes you wonder what other supercomputers are out there, not known to the press, and if it's time to increase the size of your private key and strengthen your encryption."

5 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. NSA... by ThomasFlip · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it's safe to say that the NSA, with it's largest budget out of any intelligence agency in the U.S, has probably cracked the 100 TF mark ? It's a shame we will never no what kind of muscle they can flex.

    --
    If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
    1. Re:NSA... by slavemowgli · · Score: 3, Interesting

      More on this here; also see Simon Singh's The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, which, IIRC, has a section about this.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  2. What you can't buy with money by antispam_ben · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The NSA is the single biggest employer of mathematicians in the world, and it's probably safe to say that they are at least a couple of years ahead of the rest of the world as far as cryptography and cryptanalysis is concerned. ... but you can't buy advances in mathematics with money.

    Then what do they use to pay their mathematicians? Coffee?

    --
    Tag lost or not installed.
    1. Re:What you can't buy with money by Mao · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I do want to point out that if you are a mathematician with the ability to seriously advance mathematics, it would totally suck to not be able to publish any of your major results. If a high stature mathematician is willing to work for NSA and risk not being able to publish work which he/she has done in his capcity as a NSA researcher, he/she most likely is in it for more than just money.

      I do wonder, suppose some NSA guy proves the Riemann's hypothesis. What would they do? How far does patriotism go?

  3. Re:Old Supercomputers by joib · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, the Cray T3E they used to have at the supercomputer center where I submit my stuff was dismantled and the pieces thrown into a big trash bin in the yard. *sniff*

    The life of a supercomputer is AFAIK really closer to 5 years than 10. It's not that they aren't impressive machines even 5 years old, it's just that they use _lots_ of power and floor space. Looking at how much computing per $ you can do, it's just cheaper to replace them with something new than to keep them running.