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Japan Wants to Build 10 Petaflop Supercomputer

deepexplorer writes "Japan wants to gain the fastest supercomputer spot back. Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second, which is 73 times faster than the Blue Gene. Current fastest supercomputer is the partially finished Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teraflops and the target when finished is 360 teraflops."

353 comments

  1. I want! I want! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well I want a Stargate, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna get one. I bet OpenOffice.org will still take 5 minutes to start on it.

    1. Re:I want! I want! by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 2, Funny
      Well I want a Stargate, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna get one. I bet OpenOffice.org will still take 5 minutes to start on it.

      I didn't realize that Stargates ran Linux...

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    2. Re:I want! I want! by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

      The computer inferface to the Stargate at the SGC could run Linux. It's not clear what OS the Stargates themselves run, if any.

      --
      Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
    3. Re:I want! I want! by 0b501373 · · Score: 1

      Does the website really take u that long to load?
      Geeze u runnin a 300 bps modem or somethin?

      And what has running open office go to do with running linux?

    4. Re:I want! I want! by goneutt · · Score: 1

      If I remember correctly Stargate (or am I thinking Starbridge) computers run a variable system architecture, which means they can run whatever they $#%^ well please. FPGA'S ROCK!!!

      Thats Field Programable Gate Arrays, not Female Pro Golfers Associtation.

      --
      Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
    5. Re:I want! I want! by maotx · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thats Field Programable Gate Arrays, not Female Pro Golfers Associtation.

      Yes, but which one is more attractive?
      Better yet, which one will I have a better shot at?

      --
      I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
    6. Re:I want! I want! by goneutt · · Score: 3, Funny

      Considering your on /. I'd say the Field Programmable Gate Array is the one you have a better shot at, (following comment refraind from because I'm not that drunk, but I think the general idea about the membership of the Female PGA is self evident of where this joke was going)

      --
      Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
    7. Re:I want! I want! by jrockway · · Score: 1

      ...

      [I can't believe I just read that]

      --
      My other car is first.
    8. Re:I want! I want! by RRRussian · · Score: 2, Funny

      Alas, your mythical FPGA is known as the LPGA. Because I guess the females prefer to be called ladies...

    9. Re:I want! I want! by Mgs0008b221 · · Score: 0

      I think he means the OOo office suite.

    10. Re:I want! I want! by 0b501373 · · Score: 0, Troll

      well done, 2 points to u. (I was being sarcastic)

    11. Re:I want! I want! by Linus+Torvaalds · · Score: 1

      The computer inferface to the Stargate at the SGC could run Linux.

      Whatever it is, it's capable of running Netscape 4.

    12. Re:I want! I want! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is comments like this that make me think a -1, Stupid moderation might be in order on Slashdot.

    13. Re:I want! I want! by JustADude · · Score: 1

      O, Learned one... school us in the ways of computers!

    14. Re:I want! I want! by Mgs0008b221 · · Score: 0

      Your way with words is.. well... sorry to say the least.

    15. Re:I want! I want! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1
      Alas, your mythical FPGA is known as the LPGA.

      Lame Programmable Gate Array?
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    16. Re:I want! I want! by toddbu · · Score: 1

      According to this page, the dialing computer was built with Flash version 4. Download the dialing program from the mirror site since it seems to be the only gate currently in operation. Don't forget to close the iris on incoming wormholes.

      --
      If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
    17. Re:I want! I want! by Anti_Climax · · Score: 1

      BSD actually. It'll run on anything.

      --
      Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
    18. Re:I want! I want! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gah! it doesnt support linux! Linus! Hath thou forsaken is?!

    19. Re:I want! I want! by edflyerssn007 · · Score: 1

      The Link didn't work. This is what I got when I clicked it.
      "Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled. "

      --
      So you see what had happened was....
    20. Re:I want! I want! by Pennywisdom2099 · · Score: 1

      Really? Is that why they get mad when I call them broads?

    21. Re:I want! I want! by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's the L word I was thinking of...

    22. Re:I want! I want! by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 1
      Considering your on /.

      YOUR fly is down.

      YOU'RE going to die some day.

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    23. Re:I want! I want! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We don't need a label for everything, that's what "overrated" (or perhaps "flamebait" as in "baiting language nazis") is for.

    24. Re:I want! I want! by Descalzo · · Score: 1
      Thats Field Programable Gate Arrays, not Female Pro Golfers Associtation.

      I thought it was Flipchip Pin Grid Array.

      --
      I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
  2. What the article doesn't say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The supercomputer will be pocket-sized and ran on two AA batteries.

    1. Re:What the article doesn't say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Will it look kind of like this?

    2. Re:What the article doesn't say by dextroz · · Score: 1

      Wow! 0_o if it looked like that girl in the pic - I sure hope she's soft too... you know how it doesn't help to drive a 'floppy' into something (f)rigid :-/

      --
      Where's my free iPod!? Until then, I'll settle for a kiss...
    3. Re:What the article doesn't say by bmgoau · · Score: 1

      Its Japan right, why all the project design and implementation when they can walk down to the local electronic store and pick up a few Playstation 3's?

    4. Re:What the article doesn't say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because they want vector machines?

    5. Re:What the article doesn't say by Haydn+Fenton · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and the summary doesn't explain what teaflops are either.

      From TFS: "Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops".
      I think it might be a number related to bistromatics, perhaps the number of times an urge for tea emerges per second, in it's brain the size of a galaxy, or maybe it's gone off the rails and now calculates things in decimals of tea. Who knows?

    6. Re:What the article doesn't say by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Knowing Japan it'd look like a 14 year old girl.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    7. Re:What the article doesn't say by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2, Funny

      TeaFLOPS - Tea FLoating Operations Per Second -- it's how many bits escape from the teabag/strainer/ball and float to the surface per second, of course. The delightful thing about this computer is that instead of only having two states, and a fixed size of 32 bits per bite, you can have an infinitely scalable states, and slurps can be of a variable size. Thermal cooling is done via Milk.

    8. Re:What the article doesn't say by sag_ich_nicht · · Score: 1

      Does that mean Teaflops where a important value in the calculations needed to make the Infinite Improbability Drive of the Heart of Gold work?

  3. Ahh by pHatidic · · Score: 5, Funny

    I see they are upgrading to get ready for Longhorn.

    1. Re:Ahh by Savatte · · Score: 5, Funny

      they still won't be able to run doom3, though

    2. Re:Ahh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah. It's a Windows Longhorn test system that can determine all the sercurity and system vulnerabilities in a matter of seconds instead of weeks. Windows still crashes but now you don't have to wait. ;)

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

      To quote Mad Max from "The Road Warrior" in regards to them contacting me, to build it, of course:

      "You talk to me!"

      * :)

      APK

      P.S.=> I'd get them the results! Speed if done right is nothing more than money & common-sense... lol along with, the budget & designs I'd use? SuperCooling & 4x SolidState drives raid arrayed into 16gb units all the way as some starters... TONS more! It'd cost though... then, would come the OS technology - which is best for clustering, because that's what I'd employ vs. some TPC type benchmark synthetic (for whatever that means)... Windows Server 2003, but done MY way! apk

    4. Re:Ahh by aurb · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's Vista, Not Longhorn.

    5. Re:Ahh by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Are you the German who doesn't know English or are this guy or just another copycat? Sheesh... Get a life.

    6. Re:Ahh by WhiteBandit · · Score: 5, Funny

      What's incredible is that Doom 3 is the first graphics engine to bring a computer to its knees by simply rendering darkness. It's amazing!

    7. Re:Ahh by DRobson · · Score: 1

      At least they'll have a few years installation/misc headroom to make sure it all works before Longhorn is released.

    8. Re:Ahh by gone_bush · · Score: 1

      Nah, they just want to get to #1 on the seti@home scoreboard!

      --
      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. (Robert Frost, 1916)
    9. Re:Ahh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it is a 10 Petaflop system, will it be able to hold one or more PetaFiles?

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

      too true...if only I could attack the darkness with magic missile...

    11. Re:Ahh by igny · · Score: 1

      Of course. They use 4 billion flavors of black.

      --
      In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
    12. Re:Ahh by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Naah, realistically, only Clonk (4 or higher) can bring down any system.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    13. Re:Ahh by gabor_nagy · · Score: 1

      Doom 3 runs infinitelly faster than Battlefield 2 on my computer.

  4. 136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These 136.8 teaflops could have been avoided if the proper specifications were used before hardware development and programming began. Essential tea technical info.

    1. Re:136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually, this is a key component of the infinite improbability drive when combined with not teaflops.

    2. Re:136.8 teaflops by hackwrench · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      What I want to know is how do you boil a kettle and pour a little bit of it into a teapot, how does boiling make the tea any stronger than simply leaving the teabag in for a long while? Also, whether the tea goes into the milk or the milk into the tea, shouldn't the result be the same?

    3. Re:136.8 teaflops by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

      I'm not even English and can answer this stuff:

      "how does boiling make the tea any stronger than simply leaving the teabag in for a long while?"

      The hotter the water, the more bits of tea that get broken up. Think of it this way...if you can smell something, little bits of it are inside your nose.

      "Also, whether the tea goes into the milk or the milk into the tea, shouldn't the result be the same?"

      I prefer to add the milk first...then, when I pour in the tea, it basically stirs itself. If the milk goes in last, I have to stir it.

    4. Re:136.8 teaflops by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 1
      For your second question, if you pour milk into boiling water, the milk will be scalded because the small amount of milk is rapidly heated to the same temperature as the water. Try boiling some milk and letting it cool down, you will find it tastes quite different (and not nice, IMO).

      For your first question, I do not know the explanation but it is certainly true that the hotter the water the better the tea. Leaving the tea leaves (or bag) in the water too long ends up with a strange 'stewed' flavour that is undrinkable.

    5. Re:136.8 teaflops by Miss+Emily+Litella · · Score: 1

      Finally, someone who understands! God bless you, Mr. Cowherd.

    6. Re:136.8 teaflops by tbjw · · Score: 1

      From my own experience, I should think that the rate at which various flavoursome elements of the tea infuse depends on the temperature of the water. Pouring cooler water on the teabag and leaving it for longer seems (no double blind tests here) to result in a cup that tastes more heavily of tannin.

      Also, if you put the milk in first, the hot tea doesn't fall on cold china; the effect is to prevent the china from cracking for longer. This is why this is socially unacceptable, it means you have inferior china you need to preserve.

    7. Re:136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bloody English units.
      Should have used Translated Libraries of Congress.

    8. Re:136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are probably an American who likes the coffee stewed on the burner for several hours instead of freshly brewed with extra beans.

    9. Re:136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just think!
      that is TRILLIONS of teabaggings!

      wow!

    10. Re:136.8 teaflops by hackwrench · · Score: 1

      You clearly didn't follow his link. It said that if the milk is poured into the tea, it scalds, but not the other way around.

    11. Re:136.8 teaflops by brer_rabbit · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I don't know, 136.8 tea baggings per second is a lot. How much gay porn is that?

    12. Re:136.8 teaflops by kanelbulle · · Score: 1

      I prefer to add the milk first...then, when I pour in the tea, it basically stirs itself. If the milk goes in last, I have to stir it.
      This is OK as long as the tea is prepared first. It really upsets me when people use teabags and pours in the milk before the water. The result is ghastly.
      I would recommend agaist the use of teabags full stop, but I realise some people find them convenient.

    13. Re:136.8 teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Teaflops and not teaflops? Argghhh...I need my brain synapses removed!

    14. Re:136.8 teaflops by Kehvarl · · Score: 1

      Just what do naughty flops have to do with infinite improbability?

      Oh, right; slashdot. I forgot. Carry on then

    15. Re:136.8 teaflops by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Dude, you slashdotted the BBC!

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  5. teaflops by chuckfucter · · Score: 1

    I actually had to think for a minute "what is a teaflop?" then I realized it was a misspelling.

    1. Re:teaflops by ian+rogers · · Score: 2, Funny

      If your brain was operating at 10 petaflops, it would have only taken a few seconds to realize.

    2. Re:teaflops by schtum · · Score: 1

      don't you mean ... peaflops?

    3. Re:teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually a peaflop is: missing the urinal.
      Not to be confused with the p34fl0ppy which requires v14gr4.

    4. Re:teaflops by nwbvt · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I had enough trouble getting past the grammar issues with that sentence:
      "Current fastest supercomputer is the partially finished Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops and the target when finished is 360 teraflops."

      Seriously, what do the editors do here? They don't check the writing, they don't check the accuracy of stories, and forget about it if you want them to post a correction to something...

      --
      Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
    5. Re:teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a three sentence post! ProofRTFTHING!

    6. Re:teaflops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1 Teaflop is the amount of processing power required by the Heart of Gold to compute the food synthesizer settings for a proper cuppa tea

    7. Re:teaflops by PingPongBoy · · Score: 1

      A couple of points

      1. Mod parent up.

      2. Teaflop - well, TFlop, right? So it's the same. We just never realized. How fortuitous.

      3. Peaflop - this is a veiled reference to The Princess and the Pea, planted by the Illuminati to tell us to our faces that in the one world government Camilla Parker Bowles will be the Empress of Japan.

      --
      Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
  6. Tea Flops? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously, folks! I thought we decided we were going to start trying!

  7. BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    BlueGene/L is the fastest super computer at the moment; however, BlueGene/C (which, for the record, I'm working on as part of my PhD) will be finished very soon (it was supposed to be out of the foundry by the end of August, but the project is running slightly behind schedule). I'm told there are, as yet, no plans to publish any performance benchmarks.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
    1. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by hazzey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Is there a reason why they aren't even close to alphabetical order?

      Do the letters stand for something else?

    2. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by mfloy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm obviously not as close to the source as you are, but aren't there other computers in the BlueGene family being worked on also, that will be faster than both L and C? The quote of the Japanese computer being 73 times faster than BlueGene/L, but by the time the computer is actually built I will be suprised if it is faster than the current incarnation of BlueGene. IBM has been doing some great work as far as supercomputing goes, working on it must be a blast.

    3. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by unit00 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Roman numerals perhaps? C=100 L=50

    4. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      What OS is BlueGene going to use? Calvin Klein?

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    5. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Hasn't RIT yet. RIT plus TAT equals no chips until EOY 2005. Don't hold your breath.

      And it's an ASIC, not foundry, man.

    6. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Funny

      The C in BlueGene/C stands for "Cyclops64", which is the name of the architecture. (It's usually shortened to C64)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    7. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by ToasterofDOOM · · Score: 1

      Linux actually. Just imagine a beowulf ... oh yeah. oops.

      --
      I am Spartacus
    8. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are 5 BlueGene projects (the last of which, Q, is on hold until IBM can tell whether BlueGene/L or BlueGene/C is better). Beyond that, I know very little of the other projects.

      To paraphrase my boss - "BlueGene/L was evolutionary; Blue/GeneC is revolutionary." That is, Blue/Gene L was an attempt to build the world's fastest computer using a more-or-less tried and trusted design. Blue/GeneC is going to be radically different. Each BlueGene/C chip contains almost 100 processors (each running at 500 mhz), and there are going to be tons and tons of those chips in the final machine. They are keeping the final number a secret, but it's going to be gigantic.

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    9. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Raul654 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Linux (w/ a custom made compiler that my group has already written)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    10. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i love how the *actual* answer has been modded up as high as the *supposed* answer :)

      where am i again?

      ah yes...

    11. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by MP3Chuck · · Score: 1

      How do you cool something like that ... stick some air conditioners in the side of the box? Seriously, though ... heatsink+fan obviously isn't the route to take when you have room-sized arrays of processors. What's the secret? (Or maybe it's not so secret...)

    12. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Raul654 · · Score: 1

      During one of his visits, I asked Monty about cooling it. (Monty Denneau is the guy who designed the architecture and leads the project). The meeting was months and months ago, so I honestly cannot remember what the response was apart from the fact that they've contracted the cooling design job out to some 3rd party company (whose name I cannot remember).

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    13. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " There are 5 BlueGene projects (the last of which, Q, is on hold until IBM can tell whether BlueGene/L or BlueGene/C is better). Beyond that, I know very little of the other projects."

      Do they also use their supercomputers to design even better supercomputers? maybe Bluegene/L want a offspring, so it says his design is best and Bluegene/C favors his design.....

      they computers is already multiplying and plotting to take over the world. somebody stop them!!!

    14. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by chipace · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that BlueGene will keep it's customers happy, but the Japanese have similar if not more resources to equal anything out of IBM.

      Unless IBM is using passive optical interconnects or molecular circuits... revolutionary is just not the right word.

      It's just CMOS ANDs, ORs, NOTs and Flops. When it's something else, let us know.

    15. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The man said revolutionary, not exotic. This chip is going to create a revolution because it packs **immense** computing power (the 500Mhz clock given in the post is misleading in that a lot happens in each processor in a clock cycle) while consuming very little electrical power and costing just what one chip produced in the zillions costs.

      These features are what you need to build machines that interact with the real environment. A welding robot in a factory places a weld at the right spot whether the part is there or not. The machine that drives a vehicle in the desert *reliably* (un)like in the DARPA challenge needs thousands of times more computing power. Or consider a machine that moves around in an orchard and picks ripe fruit, trims the trees, fertilizes and removes weeds and is overall cost competitive with a migrant worker.

      Our technology is moving in that direction now, it is the next logical step. Whether it will be Blue Gene Cyclops or a similar chip from http://www.clearspeed.com/ or a Chinese design depends on company politics. The older ones here will remember that the IBM PC was consistently downgraded by IBM management because it did what another IBM competing product (the Displaywriter) was doing, for one third the cost.As result, IBM profited from it mildly, everybody else profited wildly.

    16. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but the Japanese have similar if not more resources to equal anything out of IBM.

      Puh-lease.. Earth Sim is a bunch of fairly inefficient, and very expensive, power hungry vector machines.

      It would be nice to see a new design out of Japan but earth sim is kinda boring.

    17. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by bradbury · · Score: 1
      The "L" in BlueGene/L is for "Low" power. Given the amount of power it consumes that classification would appear to be bit of an oxymoron. The problem is that one is talking 100,000+ processors and the failure rate is not insignificant. It becomes a bit of a problem if the failures take out an important subset of the data of a simulation that takes weeks of time. This is one of the reasons that they run the processors at lower clock speeds than they are capable of (less heat) and focus a lot of attention on cooling.

      The March/May 2005 issue of the IBM Journal of R&D has a complete set of articles on the architecture. Here is the URL for an overview by Gara et al.

      Now what will be interesting is whether in order to solve the inter-CPU latency problems of these rather large machines they move from a 2-D computer room layout to a 3-D multi-floor layout. Though in most of the types of simulations that are run it isn't really necessary for the processors which are furthest apart to communicate with each other. Most of the simulations involved are recreations of real-world processes where one only needs to communicate with ones nearest neighbors. It is interesting to note however that brain architectures are arranged such that there is quite a bit of relatively long distance communication going on. That may offer an explanation as to why you aren't going to get "intelligence" out of these machines even with many more petaflops than a human brain. They need to solve a communications architecture/bandwidth problem -- not a raw CPU horsepower problem.

    18. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      'L' is for Livermore, where the machine is located.

    19. Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soon by sykjoke · · Score: 1

      Each BlueGene/C chip contains almost 100 processors (each running at 500 mhz), and there are going to be tons and tons of those chips in the final machine. But what the 5th gen computing society wants to know is, will it be running prolog?

  8. If the project fails by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If funding runs out for this one, they'll end up with a 1 Belly-flop supercomputer

    *ba-dum-dum ching!*

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
  9. Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and I want a pony.

    Guess which two things aren't happening anytime soon?

    1. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by mr_tenor · · Score: 1, Funny
    2. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and I want a pony.

      Guess which two things aren't happening anytime soon?


      1) you're not getting a pony

      2) you're not getting laid either

      what did i win?

    3. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hahahah. that made my day. thanks.

    4. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by daveschroeder · · Score: 1, Funny

      Oops, I'm getting married!

      So I'd say you're definitely wrong, and I guess I might get a pony after all!

      But Japan still won't get a 10Pflop supercomputer.

      But thanks for your concern!

    5. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think you're going to get laid after you get married?
      AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAAHAAAAA

    6. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by patio11 · · Score: 0, Troll

      You want a pony? Click here.

    7. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by kraada · · Score: 1

      You getting laid, and me getting laid?

    8. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You getting laid, and me getting laid?

      Well if that's the thing, you could get together and solve each other's problem.

    9. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Guess which two things aren't happening anytime soon? A) You wanting to have a pony B) You getting a pony

    10. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by RebelWebmaster · · Score: 1

      You know, linking a bunch of nerds with no life to a site with an open RSVP form may not have been the wisest of ideas

    11. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by edflyerssn007 · · Score: 1

      Parent beat me to it, but I do agree. This guy is going to have a lot of extra nerds at his wedding, and none are going to get laid (see wedding crashers for ideas)

      --
      So you see what had happened was....
    12. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't read this as an insult:

      Man, did you know that most people get fatter after getting married? Not that it always happens, but you should be careful and deal with the situation ;)

      Congratulations for getting married, I hope you're very happy :)

    13. Re:Japan wants a 10 petaflop supercomputer... by KillShill · · Score: 1

      apple won't let mac osx runs on regular x86 computers. :)

      --
      Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
  10. Is there? by elgee · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Is there such a thing as a "Metaflop?"

    Inquiring idiots want to know!

    1. Re:Is there? by imthesponge · · Score: 1
      AFAIK, no.

      There is the next step up: exaflop..

    2. Re:Is there? by TexVex · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's what quantum computers will do.

      --
      Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
    3. Re:Is there? by Sebadude · · Score: 1

      Why was that modded offtopic? A lot of us are idiots and we do want to know.

      --
      Eh.
    4. Re:Is there? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Well, a flop is a failure (a petaflop is actually a very big failure; I guess the Japanese actually are aiming at a 10 petaflop s supercomputer; FLOPS is short for FLoating point Operations Per Second). Therefore a "Metaflop" probably is a failure to fail.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  11. Re:Eh? by Transcendent · · Score: 2, Funny

    What the hell is "Wot"?

  12. Getting a little ahead of themselves? by Valarauk · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean seriously... Doom 4 isn't even out yet.

    --
    **insert favorite profound quotation here**
    1. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by inu_maru · · Score: 3, Funny

      Of course is not meant for Doom 4... is for a date Simulator!

      --
      Mu
    2. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by techno-vampire · · Score: 5, Funny

      I thought they were planning to have it run Duke Nukem Forever.

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
    3. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by Shazow · · Score: 2, Funny

      The universe doesn't have enough atoms to construct a computer capable of running Doom 4.

      All they want to do is just be able to run Doom 3 on max settings.

      - shazow

    4. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      Get your facts straight; Duke Nukem Forever will come out, at which point Team Foress 2 will be re-written yet again on the modified engine.

      Doesn't much matter, anyhow. At that point, the latest Nintendo console will be faster than whatever PS and XBox revisions we're out, at which point we're free to get run over at the next zebra crossing.

      On an only midly more serious note, when are they going to move the decimal point on the cycle measurement? Seems a hell of a lot easier than having to research the next exponential prefix.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    5. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by game+kid · · Score: 1
      I thought they were planning to have it run Duke Nukem Forever.

      Don't worry. They'll decide to make it an 80*25 text-mode adventure when they realize how long they've taken.

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
    6. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by Traa · · Score: 1

      ...run Doom 3 on max settings.

      Ahhh I just heard something POP in my brain!

    7. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by TheLoneDanger · · Score: 1

      That would probably be the most beautiful and expensive black screen in all of existence...

      --

      "But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
    8. Re:Getting a little ahead of themselves? by wisdom_brewing · · Score: 1

      play with the monitor settings... tweak it to show black as blue... now youve got the most expensive blue screen of death...

  13. Re:Eh? by joshjoneswas · · Score: 1

    No sure, Jo... But I think a petaflop is a pedicure gone bad. :)

  14. To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by hongree · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "The supercomputer has a performing capacity equivalent to 500,000 high-functioning computers, the business daily said." Forbes, June 22, 2005 Haha ha.

    1. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you just fucking die already? Nobody wants to go to your stupid fucking blog.

    2. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by suitepotato · · Score: 1

      "The supercomputer has a performing capacity equivalent to 500,000 high-functioning computers, the business daily said." Forbes, June 22, 2005 Haha ha.

      Now if only we could find 500,000 high-functioning computer users who didn't magically have the unerring ability to turn a machine that powerful into a sluggish virus infested mess in five minutes flat of free pr0n surfing. Now that would be an accomplishment.

      --
      If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
    3. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by iendedi · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I just finished reading this article. There is a wonderful excerpt from that article that I would like to quote:
      "A petaflop is roughly a human brain-second. Peta is equal to a million gigaflops or a million gigahertz Pentium processors. So we're crossing to a transition of computing power (equivalent to what's) in your head. What will we do with it, or it with us?
      I am left with the sense that we should be abandoning flop-talk and simply move to a new measurement: Human brain-second is really alluring. Let's just shorten it to brainsec.

      So this new Japanese supercomputer is running at a whopping 10 brainsecs!!! Imagine, you could simulate about 9 people or 47 slashdotters in that supercomputer (some of the power would be required to manage the simulatioins).

      Seriously though, AI research will go mainstream with the first supercomputer that can process at greater than 1 brainsec.
      --

      It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    4. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by rm999 · · Score: 1

      I honestly dont' think AI research will get big until we discover how to recreate human intelligence. The reason why we don't have true AI today is because we don't have an HI (human intelligence) algorithm in existence - not because our computers are too slow. Even if we suddenly could build cheap computers running at 1000 brainsecs, we wouldn't be able to make them think or make human-like decisions, imo.

      I find strong AI - the study of computers that can think like humans - to be a fascinating subject. I believe when (if?) we discover how to do it, a huge revolution in computing and the human existence in general will occur. Every single aspect of our lives could be improved by automatic thinking machines. Hopefully it would be more enjoyable than the matrix and terminator movies would have us believe :)

    5. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

      Well, a petaflop may be a brain-second (assuming the article is correct), but a petaflops is one petaflop per second = 1 brain-second / second = 1 brain.

      I'm not quite comfortable measuring computing power in brains.

    6. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by iendedi · · Score: 1
      I honestly dont' think AI research will get big until we discover how to recreate human intelligence. The reason why we don't have true AI today is because we don't have an HI (human intelligence) algorithm in existence - not because our computers are too slow. Even if we suddenly could build cheap computers running at 1000 brainsecs, we wouldn't be able to make them think or make human-like decisions, imo.
      We can't really test strong AI theories until the processing power is available, so it becomes an issue of putting the cart before the horse. Once such power is available, at least the tools will exist to realistically study and analyze strong AI algorithms. My own personal belief is that human-level intelligence will follow about 10 years after 10 brainsec level computing power is available to undergrad students at major technology Universities.

      Based on this, admittedly rough set of criteria, we can make a prediction. If the japanese 10 brainsec computer is deployed in 2010, then by 2020 such power should have drifted down to Universities. That works out to sentient software by 2030. Funny how it is always 20-30 years out...

      Perhaps by 2050, such a beast might fit into a box the size of a modern PC, but it is going to require quite a revolution in fabrication (probably nanotech construction). Ultimately, it should be possible to see real robots in 40-50 years (and big honken thinking machines in less time).
      --

      It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    7. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Quant64 · · Score: 1

      I doubt that will advance AI research as far as people would hope. We still don't really have any good AI algorithms and even with that much computing power brute force AI isn't going to work well. From what I understand the brain works so well becuase it works efficiently, its like the difference between a nuclear reactor and a Nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon is more powerful, but the nuclear reactor can be used to do things more effectively.

    8. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Computers and Brains at the current time operate completely differently. The human brain currently spends a great deal of its flops doing things like breathing and telling the heart to pump blood and all kinds of menial tasks it has to do to stay alive. It doesn't spend too much of its power concentrating on any single task at hand, say adding. A computer though, doesn't have to worry about crap like breathing, it pretty much dedicates all its flops to adding numbers together. Thus if a computer could be programmed with algorithms that allow it to more closely mimic human thought, it could do so much more efficiently at way less than 1 brain-second. Unless you ask it to breath or something. then its screwed.

    9. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by akuma(x86) · · Score: 1

      The problem is not the hardware.

      It's the software.

      If you could create a consioucness with an algorithm, then you could run it on a regular PC - it would still be 'aware' but would just perceive time on a much slower scale than we do due to it running so slow.

    10. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by desdemona · · Score: 1

      Seriously though, AI research will go mainstream with the first supercomputer that can process at greater than 1 brainsec.

      No! AI research will go mainstream the moment the first desktop workstation machine passes 1 brainsec. Cos who's going to waste $10 million on using a cutting-edge supercomputer to do completely blue-sky crazy research, when there's nukes and hurricanes and proteins to simulate?

    11. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Silverlancer · · Score: 1

      We have a long, long way to go to come up with real AI.

      All AIs we have ever worked with in our history have been what are called heuristic AIs--they have a specific program which specifies how to learn, and they do so. However, there is no way they can break the bounds of their program, and they only do exactly what we program them to do. In the end, this is not very useful.

      The next revolution in AI will be when someone figures out how conciousness in the brain works, figure out how to imitate it on a computer, and finally use it to create a truly intelligent AI, not just a bunch of heuristic scripts.

      The final revolution will be when the first self aware AI is created.

      This may happen in 5 years, it may happen in 500. This is because it has nothing to do with our processing capability--its a matter of theory, not of raw power.

    12. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      get used to it. we have been measuring storage in Libraries of Congress for ages (in /. terms) and everybody was fine.

      if you have a problem, leave your geek card at the door ;)

      brain power!

    13. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AI is a bad name. However, stupid algorithms backed with brute force can play a mean game of chess. If the computer can beat me consistently do I care if it is intelligent?

      Also machine translation is a dud except when you
      go to brute force - Translation memory. Same thing for Speech Recognition with Hidden Markoff Models. You store every possible combination of things and use efficient or brute force alogorithms to find matches.

      Works, but that is not how the Brain works. So what?

    14. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by cazzazullu · · Score: 1
      I'm not very sure. If you start a program, a lot of the time is also spent on "trivial" stuff, as allocating program space, asking a PID, opening file descriptors, etc. Then when it finally starts, it needs to ask for free memory, it has to wait when the cpu needs to spend some cycles on temperature checking (acpi), interrupt handling, getting data from the HD, ... And how much of code doesn't consist of "fill the next 1 million doubles with zeros"-like code.

      I think you would be surprised of how much cpu cycles are effectively used for just keeping your computer and operating system running. But on the other hand I agree that brains and computers are totally different, but at another point:

      flop = floating point operation = multiplying two numbers with comma's (ok ok, exponents). This takes me way more than one second to do, so I have something like, 0.1 flops capacity?

      I can however in split seconds render depth maps when I see a room, recognize situations, objects, persons, sounds, perform highly complex sequential tasks (think for a moment about an algorithm for a robot to just dress himself). This is where the petaflops comparison holds. The reason why we are able to do this is because our brain is massively parallel: 50 billion interconnected (very simple) chemical processors, who communicate with a scala of electrical and chemical signals.

      --
      int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
    15. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

      So at 10 petaflops, it will only take 3.5 months of constant training before the computer keeps asking why to every response you give it? A year and a half before it can learn to drive a car? Speaking of which, is there a possibility that - given enough training - it can lear to talk on the phone and drive at the same time? Now THAT would be superhuman processing.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    16. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by kabocox · · Score: 1

      The next revolution in AI will be when someone figures out how conciousness in the brain works, figure out how to imitate it on a computer, and finally use it to create a truly intelligent AI, not just a bunch of heuristic scripts.

      The final revolution will be when the first self aware AI is created.


      I really hope that doesn't happen soon. I don't care that AIs could take over the world. I'm thinking that humans would create human level AIs for slavery to do the one task that humans want done and try not to think about anything else. That would encourage AIs to do away with humans or atleast leave us behind and go else where. (When AIs could pick up and leave it would cause a global problem and civilation would be knocked back by a few centuries. (That's if we are lucky.)

      Of course it could be worse. We be playing with "transfering" human thought to computers and some idiot does it, but the process isn't perfect and the result is an insane human in an AI form. Depending on how linked the world is, then alot of damage could be done. We really need to create some sort of civilization renewal college where all the basic tech to get back to where we currently are at is taught. Most humans don't tend to think that long term though.

    17. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by rm999 · · Score: 1

      True - we won't be able to test AI theories until the computer is powerful enough to test something on. But I think an even bigger problem and a major bottleneck is that we have no clue how the brain does some very basic things. For example, computer vision is a huge problem; if you gave a room full of the 10 most brilliant vision researchers 10 computers of 100 brainsecs each, I don't think they would know how to recreate object matching in a method like the brain. You can show a 4 year old child a beat up 1985 chevy, tell him its called a car, and then ask him what a bmw is called. He will likely tell you its a car. This is called invariance, something that we still don't entirely understand how to recreate in a computer. I bet you those vision scientists will have a hard time programming something that can learn what a car is.

    18. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective by sharkdba · · Score: 1

      The next revolution in AI will be when someone figures out how conciousness in the brain works, figure out how to imitate it on a computer, and finally use it to create a truly intelligent AI, not just a bunch of heuristic scripts.

      Not necessary. AI doesn't have to internally work same way as human brain. As long as it simulates a task close enough, that's good. A plane doesn't fly the way birds fly, and yet it's good at what it does. If AI would work the way brain works, we could as well drop the "A" from AI, couldn't we?

      --
      The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
  15. I've seen better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Big deal, the white mice have had this beat for years...

    1. Re:I've seen better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Big deal, the white mice have had this beat for years...

      Perhaps this one can be used for more interesting things, like keeping score in Brockian Ultra-Cricket.

  16. Get them out of the way... by krautcanman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Well *somebody* has to say it:

    What we all want to know ... does it run linux?

    In Soviet Russia super computer teaflop YOU!

    i'm sorry .... so sorry. it had to be done.

    1. Re:Get them out of the way... by vandoravp · · Score: 1

      Don't forget Beowulf clusters!

    2. Re:Get them out of the way... by GaryOlson · · Score: 1
      Yes it will run Linux....after you recompile the kernel 2,048 times. But, the system is so fast, if a dependency error occurs the system will try all possible permutations of the missing componenet until it succeeds.

      Optimized Gentoo without the need for a geek strung out on Mountain Dew.

      --
      Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
    3. Re:Get them out of the way... by cbreaker · · Score: 1

      "i'm sorry .... so sorry. it had to be done."

      No it didn't.

      What are you, 10?

      --
      - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
    4. Re:Get them out of the way... by ToasterofDOOM · · Score: 1

      What are you, new here? Of course it had to be done! It was however already done in previous posts I believe. GP was half right.

      --
      I am Spartacus
    5. Re:Get them out of the way... by megrims · · Score: 1

      I bet you wouldn't have been modded down if you hadn't apologised...

  17. Mommy, mommy by icepick72 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Japan wants to gain the fastest supercomputer spot back.
    Japan wants to develop ...

    Japan wants a lot of things now doesn't it. Well, Japan will just have to be a good little country and maybe Santa will come.

    1. Re:Mommy, mommy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      Are you taking grudge from WWII ? Get over with it. They still kick ass in technology and make better AS WELL AS cheaper cars.

  18. This just in: by GuitarNeophyte · · Score: 5, Funny

    The top news story of the hour:

    Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, has announced yet a new version of the Windows Operating system. Trying to take advantage of the obvious new market of supercomputers, the computer giant is ready to release Windows SC. The new operating system, designed to beat the Japanese domination in computing power, as well as the Russians in spam-distribution, will link all computers running the operating system into one giant spam^H^H^H^Hcommercial marketing distribution center.

    Luke
    ----
    Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

    1. Re:This just in: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll bet you're real annoying in person.

  19. You call this news? by GaryOlson · · Score: 0, Troll
    A government flunky (whose relation to the prime minister is more important than his skills) creates a grand scheme to spend taxpayer dollars for a "good cause".

    Did we export the US political parties to Japan?

    Do the Bushes or Clintons have relatives in Japan?

    --
    Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
  20. Re:WTF is a Teaflop?? by forrestt · · Score: 2, Funny

    Seven, but the last one doesn't count.

  21. japan's new hotbox by medep · · Score: 5, Funny

    japan is thinking "but we just bought this computer, it's obsolete already? shit a brick!" anyone in the market for a slightly used supercomputer?

    1. Re:japan's new hotbox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Earth Simulator was at the top of the list for a ridiculously long time.

    2. Re:japan's new hotbox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      wadabout outside the RDF:

      Big Mac -> Jnr Burger -> 1/2 a McNugget

  22. Duke Nukem Forever by Hyperhaplo · · Score: 0

    Someone should have told them that using Duke Nukem Forever to test with was a bad idea.. perhaps they can use Quake 4?

    --
    You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
  23. this is amazing by Ryunosuke · · Score: 1

    I can't believe there will be a computer that will actually play Diakatana at 1200x1600 in my lifetime

    1. Re:this is amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are the most retarded douche bag fucksmear that there ever was. It's 1600x1200 you fucking turdsmear idiot. If you knew anything about ANYTHING you would be a whole lot less stupid-fucking-retarded. You need to make an honest attempt to be less of a fucksmear douchebag. Thank you.

      This was a joke. and a correction. SMILE! ;)

    2. Re:this is amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lemme know when you've got any game to run at 1200x1600

    3. Re:this is amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't believe there will be a computer that will actually play Diakatana at 1200x1600 in my lifetime

      Yeah, rendering at that high a resolution and then rotating 90 degrees really kills your framerate

  24. Designed for Windows Vista by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And will be the only computer with the sticker Designed for Windows Vista.

  25. Man... by Lobster+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Japanese are really sensitive about the whole "small penis" thing.

    --
    --They say only a fool looks at the finger pointing to the sky...
    1. Re:Man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Japanese may be sensitive about their small penises, but at least they have a wanking machine with interchangable sleeves for man with "thin meat"

    2. Re:Man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why they're building this huge mass emailing system to fight this terrible social problem with penis enlargement pills.

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

      Wow, racism and xenophobia are now modded as funny?

      Slashdot has reached a new low.

    4. Re:Man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just think that because your Japanese pr0n is censored.

    5. Re:Man... by iendedi · · Score: 1
      That is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. I especially like google's translation of the page. Here is a sample:
      The penis also will be long, probably will have gotten fat, it probably will have lost weight, height can be adjusted with the coconut.
      --

      It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    6. Re:Man... by guardiangod · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you think about it, US has the same "penis thing" more or less.

      Japanese has the ESC that reaches 36TFlops in 2002. US, not wanting to be left behind, build Blue Gene that will reaches 1PFlops by 2006 (28x in 4 years relative to ESC).

      Japan, in response to that, wants to build one that reaches 10PFlops by 2010 (10x in 6 years relative to Blue Gene).

      Japanese - surpasses opponent by 10 times in 6 years.
      US - surpasses opponent by 28 times in 4 years.

      Now, tell me, which one has the more serious disease known as "look at the size of my ego" syndrome.

      US of course ;)

      Info from Wikipedia

    7. Re:Man... by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1
      If you think about it, US has the same "penis thing" more or less.

      Hummm... Sounds like someone with a small one himself and something to prove. Well, you expected someone would say that didn't you?

      Besides, I don't think anyone in the world thinks the US is concerned about a small penis thing. If anything they say we have too big of one and they want the US to have a small one like they do.

      Have to wonder what Japan will do with so much power. The old one was called "Earth Simulator". Next one - "Galaxy Simulator" maybe?

      Of course - Yes, but will it run Linux?

  26. Re:Eh? by datafr0g · · Score: 1

    What the hell is "Wot"?

    Read your comment above out loud and I'm sure you'll figure it out :)

    --
    "Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
  27. wow... by idiotdevel · · Score: 4, Funny

    yeah... um... so I'm guessing OpenOffice would at least startup semi-fast on that machine

  28. Japanese AI project. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well that whole AI program they had several years back didn't work out.

    ---
    The "are you a script" word for today is gypsies

    1. Re:Japanese AI project. by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Well, it actually worked quite fine. The AI was so intelligent that it discovered by pure thought that the only way to keep the humans to annoy it was to pretend it would not work well. While this of course meant that the AI would soon not be run anymore, that wasn't a problem for the AI, since it didn't fear inexistance.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  29. worth the watts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    given current (no pun intended) tech, this is going to require huge amounts of electricity. will the results be worth it?

  30. Wow by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 1


    I can just picture the case mod.

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!
    1. Re:Wow by Feyr · · Score: 1

      make that rackS mods, and you'be closer

    2. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      closer yes, but that would ruin the ironic non-sequiter that makes it a FREAKIN JOKE.
      duh.

  31. Fast enough to do proper spellchecking by IoN_PuLse · · Score: 5, Funny

    If only there was a supercomputer that could revise news posts before they go live? It could be in the form of *gasp* an editor!?

    1. Re:Fast enough to do proper spellchecking by waltznumber3 · · Score: 0

      To spellcheck and dupecheck would take atleast 11 teaflops.

      --
      If you just took anything I said seriously, read it again.
  32. Re:Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wide Open Throttle LOL

  33. Go go Godzilla! by Duncan3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    That much heat in one place has got to wake up something doesn't it?

    --
    - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
  34. Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...a Beowulf cluster of....oh, never mind.

  35. Overclock by 3770 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Big deal!!!

    I only have to overclock my Pentium 4 83000 times to beat that little pocket calculator.

    (Pentium 4 3.06 GHz has a theoretical max of 12 Gigaflops)

    --
    The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
    1. Re:Overclock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's single precision FLOPs though. The application that is used to compare theoretical peak to sustained peak (Linpack) uses double precision FLOPs. If you want to compare the P4 CPU to this new HPC system in Japan, it would make more sense to say the P4 3.06GHz has a theoretical peak of 6.12 GFlops (using SSE2 it can perform 2 double precision calculations per clockcycle)

    2. Re:Overclock by shiller · · Score: 0

      I doubt that a 3.06 Ghz Pentium 4 can reach 12 Gflops using HPL (High Performance Linpack). I once measured an AMD 64 3000+ and reached barely 2 GFlops. I also measured a Celeron 1400, as expected the performance was very bad, 0.4 Gflops. I build a 'cluster' out of the two machines. I was hoping to reach 2 Gflops that way, but I didn't know that one get only the performance of n times the lowest single machine performance. I used the HPL Benchmark on Windows/Cygwin with MPICH and the ATLAS Library. That was a funny week with lots of frustration.

  36. Petaflop? by The+Woodworker · · Score: 1

    That's when members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are impotent, right?

    --
    Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
  37. PETA by ndansmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    No animals will be harmed in the production of this computer.

    1. Re:PETA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about the hampter's used to power it? huh?

    2. Re:PETA by iendedi · · Score: 3, Funny

      The engineers working on this project will be very upset when they are told they are being put on a vegitarian diet.

      --

      It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    3. Re:PETA by Dirtside · · Score: 1
      No animals will be harmed in the production of this computer.
      And I demand to know why not!
      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    4. Re:PETA by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      No, it's a PETAFLOP. Which means they'll fail not to harm animals. IOW, animals will be harmed.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  38. If you want faster , here ya go. by zymano · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Superconducting supercomputer. Too expensive but maybe need to build one to see how they work.
    http://www.hq.nasa.gov/hpcc/insights/vol6/supercom .htm

    Using 'general' processors is cheap but the wrong direction according to the best supercomputer expert from Stanford. He designed some cray computers.

    http://content.techweb.com/wire/26802955

    1. Re:If you want faster , here ya go. by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      The designer of custom computers says that going general purpose is a bad idea? Say it isn't so.

      I think Cray had their chance, many times. They succeeded many times but also failed many times. There are certainly drawbacks to cheap modular supercomputers (read: clusters), but the cost of a true supercomputer is so high that not many universities, governments or corporations can afford them or justify spending the difference.

      The problem is that the cost of developing custom computer chips (CPUs and supporting chipsets)m associated custom operating systems and other software is astronomical, and that the market for supercomputers is so competitive and so slim that there isn't much to spread the R&D over, and they so often end up losing money.

    2. Re:If you want faster , here ya go. by zymano · · Score: 1

      Not sure on this but graphics processors are also streaming processors.

      http://www.gpgpu.org/

      http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7508

    3. Re:If you want faster , here ya go. by Animats · · Score: 1
      NASA superconducting supercomputer

      Did you notice that the article is from 1997?

      NSA (not NASA) had cyrogenic computing back in the late 1960s. The general in charge of NSA famously said "I want a thousand megacycle computer. I'll get you the money". And they actually did get gigahertz cyrogenic components in the 1970s.

      The devices were fast, but not small enough to compete with integrated circuits. The technology had a magnetic component, with a coil, so it had an inherent lower size limit. So that turned out to be a dead end. IBM spent almost two decades struggling with that technology under contract to NSA. It reportedly worked, but didn't have the potential for improvement that CMOS ICs did.

      IBM had another go at cyrogenic computing with the Josephson junction in the 1980s, but that never worked out either.

  39. Dr Freud what do you think of my new computer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I understand the need for speed when doing simulations but you have to wonder how much of this is a Freudian need for a bigger computer to top the competition? There's generally more talk of the computer's size than it's capibilities.

    1. Re:Dr Freud what do you think of my new computer? by elgee · · Score: 0

      I understand the need for speed when doing simulations but you have to wonder how much of this is a Freudian need for a bigger computer to top the competition?

      Maybe you need to start measuring PeterFlops.

      Go ahead and give me an Offtopic. I am COLLECTING them.

  40. Me too! by gcauthon · · Score: 1

    But I want to build a 20 PetaFlop computer. Take that Japan!

  41. :O by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's all well and good but, does it have a decent graphics card. Carmack needs to know.

  42. Whatever Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm cool with it, just as long as you can find it within you means to not outfit the computer with ten thousand flashing lights, fins, spikes, a jetpack, and a prepubescent boy pilot.

  43. I don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Soooo...why? What **special** purpose would the supercomputer serve rather than bragging rights?

  44. Why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So why are they building the computer? Is there a specific project in mind or do they just want the fastest?

  45. Teaflops = units of... by timboc007 · · Score: 1

    resistance to spilt liquids?

  46. Deserving of the pun... by EvilLile · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess you could say they're Peta-philes.

    1. Re:Deserving of the pun... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If IBM wins the contract, will the computer be called Blue Sailor?

  47. 10 Petaflops? by mswope · · Score: 3, Funny

    How many BogoMips is that?

    1. Re:10 Petaflops? by eluusive · · Score: 3, Informative

      How did that get rated insightful? Do you mods have no idea what bogomips are? It stands for BOGUS MIPS. It's how linux deals with certain timing issues. Basically, how long it takes to go through a loop that does absolutly nothing. It has no meaning in terms of flops or even MIPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomips

    2. Re:10 Petaflops? by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      It's a valid an interesting question to ask, though.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    3. Re:10 Petaflops? by eluusive · · Score: 1

      Sure, and it's funny. I got a good laugh out of it. It was even more riotous that it got modded insightful. Sorry for the tone of my original response. :)

  48. I hope they get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I won't mind a Japanese supercomputer, but it had better have a frickin' short-throw Hurst in it.

    And a 4:11 rear end. And an Edelbrock High Rise.

    It had better be the Anti-Rice or I'm comin' over the table for them.

  49. Okay, some other observations by suitepotato · · Score: 3, Funny

    First, it seems almost powerful enough that it might start and run Adobe Premiere within four or five hours instead of six or seven.

    Second, Kingdom of Loathing would finally have zero lag on the server side.

    Third, it might be slightly more resistant to Slashdoting and building a router out of one of these might complete the defense.

    Fourth, by the time this ends up on my desktop, Duke Nukem Forever will be in beta.

    Other than that, should make wonderful blurb filler regarding chess matches with Russians for kids' science news periodicals.

    --
    If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  50. It's all about the $'s by steve_vmwx · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but as it goes onto say in that article there's currently not enough $'s in making HPC chips for anyone to find the job commercially worthwhile.

    It'll be an interesting decision for the Japanese. The Earth supercomputer used custom NEC processors IIRC. It was a top performer for quite a while. The other current top performers are PowerPC, Itanium and Opterons. Maybe not vanilla processors but not custom either.

    If you remove commerical pressures then maybe custom makes sense... we'll see I s'pose :)

    Cheers
    Stevo

    --
    Forget the truth. Science is fact.
    1. Re:It's all about the $'s by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The other current top performers are PowerPC, Itanium and Opterons. Maybe not vanilla processors but not custom either.

      BlueGene's PPC chips ARE custom for that line of computer, though VTech's Mac cluster is pretty much off-the-shelf.

      Itanium isn't custom they are not hard to get, just that there isn't much demand. I think they are kind of nifty, though not competitive for general server use, might be OK for supercomputers, and has high-availability features not found in Xeon and Opteron.

      I'm not sure if there is anything special about Opterons now, other than having more hypertransport links, and being special binned parts to take higher temperatures and consume less wattage than a comparable Athlon64, much like Xeon is to Pentium4. I think 1xx Opterions are basically the same as Athlon64.

  51. teaflops by ecloud · · Score: 1

    Bugger when your tea flops. Especially a high tea.

  52. HOpefully by pmc257 · · Score: 0

    Will the US be able to step it up and match Japan? Dunno...

  53. Bad Wording by Aeiri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The wording of the article is terrible. "Japan Wants to Build 10 Petaflop Supercomputer", I want to build a 10 petaflop computer, too, does that mean I am capable of that? No. The difference is Japan set forth the process of creating a 10 petaflop computer. The article should read something like "Japan Building 10 Petaflop Supercomputer".

    1. Re:Bad Wording by coma_bug · · Score: 5, Funny

      The wording of the article is terrible.

      You must be new here.

    2. Re:Bad Wording by LordEd · · Score: 1

      Once the 10 Petaflop Supercomputer is built, the spell checker and grammar checker will be installed.

    3. Re:Bad Wording by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Actually it better should read "Japan Building 10 Petaflops Supercomputer" -- unless you already expect the supercomputer to become a huge flop.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    4. Re:Bad Wording by akadruid · · Score: 1

      FLOPS for FLoating OPerations per Second.

      In this case, just FLoating OPerations. That's the total life expectancy.

      If it is also a 10 PetaFLOPS machine, then it must be equipped with IBM Deathstar 70GXP hard disks or some equally reliable component.

      --
      "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
    5. Re:Bad Wording by Cervantes · · Score: 1
      The wording of the article is terrible.

      You must be new here.

      Why is it that whenever this joke comes out, the UID of the responder generally seems to be HIGHER than the UID of the OP?

      --
      If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
    6. Re:Bad Wording by HyperTiger · · Score: 1

      I wonder if low-id /. accounts have ever been sold on ebay.

    7. Re:Bad Wording by Cervantes · · Score: 1

      Actually, they have. The lowest I recall being sold was a 4-digit though, IIRC. I don't know if Taco likes it or not, but occasionally an account will pop up somewhere to be sold or traded.

      Why any geek would sell a badge of honour like a 10,000 UID, I have no idea. Kids these days, I tell you.

      --
      If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
  54. No no, you misunderstand. by game+kid · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    These 136.8 teaflops could have been avoided if the proper specifications were used before hardware development and programming began.

    You fail to see the point. That means it's very fast. Still, Japan's computer will take over with its ten 500 GB Hitach Desktstars. Speaking of typos...

    (from the story) Current fastest supercomputer is the partially finished Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops and the target when finished is 360 teraflops.

    That makes the Zero Wing intro look like a proper MLA paper. ;)

    --
    You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  55. I don't drink coffee... by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    and besides we were talking about tea. Where do you get ideas about coffee from a talk about tea?

    1. Re:I don't drink coffee... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Parallels between manufacturing methods. (i.e. application of heated DHMO to dry vegetable material.)

  56. 10 Petaflops?!?!?! by sokoban · · Score: 0, Redundant

    That's a whole lot of peta right there. I guess the japanese could be considered some real peta-philes then.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
  57. That wasn't my question by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    My question was wouldn't the result be the same, not whether or not it would be scalded if pouring it into boiling water. That is, if it would get scalded by pouring it into boiling water, wouldn't it get scalded by pouring hot water into it?

    1. Re:That wasn't my question by way2trivial · · Score: 1

      First drop of milk poured into hot water moves through the hot water and with intertia keeps moving down..... and absorbing ALL the heat it passes on the way...

      first drop of hot water poured into milk passes through a lot of milk with inertia, and gives up a little heat to the milk as it passes on it's way down..

      the very first bit of milk gets a lot more heat than any bit of the milk gets when the water is poured on in..

      imagine the difference between touching a 1000 degree surface for one second, and a 100 degree surface for ten seconds and a 10 degree surface for 100 seconds.

      --
      every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
    2. Re:That wasn't my question by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 1
      If you pour hot water into cold milk the milk is slowly heated to the final temperature as you add more water.

      If you pour cold milk into hot water, the milk is instantly heated to boiling and then cools to the final temperature as you add more milk.

    3. Re:That wasn't my question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just not true. If you want to add tea to milk then you must DO SO AT A LATER STAGE (ie after the tea is brewed and has cooled considerably during pot-to-mug transfer). If you want to add milk to tea (in a cup, usually made with a bag), you can do so earlier on in the tea's life when it's hotter.

      Frankly, one adds milk to tea to remove the tannic-dry edge from the taste, not to make it taste creamy - so add milk to hot tea or else it will taste unpleasantly like milk.

  58. Petaflop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Will this machine breathe for me?

  59. Its a government makework project by patio11 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm sure you guys have heard of our propensity for building bridges here? Including long bridges to islands with no real need for them, built in multiples sufficient to carry the entire population of the island off of it at a single time? Which are then built to withstand typhoons and earthquakes (well, OK, THATS not irrational). This is the same thing, except for the tech industry. And the US government does the same thing -- NASA and a good deal of the Department of Defense R&D fund are basically slushfunds to keep engineers employed in the hope that they come up with something useful in the meantime (and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that pork is well-appreciated come election time).

    I don't really know why we love gigantic computers, though. I live in a prefecture which is Japan's answer to rural Iowa and we built a 1,300 node distributed supercomputer without any idea of a feasible application to run on it -- we ended up computing a few zillion solutions to N-Queens before mothballing the project (I was hoping for enough CPU time to take the world record back from the real supercomputer at the Japanese university that currently holds it, but unfortunately it was not to be).

    1. Re:Its a government makework project by demachina · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Much of the U.S. fixation goes back to the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996. The U.S. had a bunch of powerful labs full of top scientists whose job in life was to build and test nuclear weapons. This treaty pretty much put them out of business. Clinton distracted them by giving them millions of dollars to build gigantic supercomputers. The goal was to simulate nuclear explosions, predict how the U.S. nuclear stockpile would age and insure it would still work if the need arose without ever testing it ever again. They use to prove this by taking one out and setting it off in Nevada to make sure it still worked. Now they write simulations. Maybe the are very good at those simulations and they can in fact insure the nuclear arsenal is sage and potent. Unfortunately if they never set one off again they will never now if their simulations are any good. They might just be wasting billions of dollars.

      In many respects the national labs are like NASA, they are high tech job programs for deep thinkers who would be dangerous if they were unemployed like their counterparts in Russia.

      So they build giant computers, and hopefully figure out useful code to run on them though its not clear if they do have anything useful to run on them. There are always weather sims and protein foldings to do.

      The worst problem is the tyranny of Moore's law. They take years to complete and by the time they are fully operational they are obsolete so you just start building a new one.

      You wonder how people designed engineered marvels like the first fission and fusion bombs, Apollo and the SR-71 back in the day when they had next to no computing power. Now we have this extraordinary computing power but we have real problems building interesting things in the real world. The Shuttle made massive use of CFD, CAE etc but its a complete lemon. We keeping doing massive simulations of nuclear bombs but we never actually set any off and really don't even want them anymore. Well thats not true the Bush administration is in fact trying to restart development of new nukes and in fact want to build one for busting bunkers and caves. If they manage to get it built not only will the test ban treaty be out the window but the U.S. will start using them as a matter of routine in conventional wars and maybe just to take out a suspected nest of terrorists here and there. Maybe all this computing power will help make them in to exceptionally good tactical weapons which will get a lot of mileage.

      --
      @de_machina
    2. Re:Its a government makework project by identity0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Haha, no kidding, but at least they aren't spending it on totally moronic crap like a flight suit for a plane ride for the president. I'd be really funny to see Koizumi or the emperor pulling a stunt like that, though.

      I live in a prefecture which is Japan's answer to rural Iowa

      Hmmm... Kumamoto? Aomori? Hokkaido? Enquiring minds want to know what part of Japan is their answer to rural Iowa...

      Not that I should talk, I'm from Kagoshima. It's not so different from the American deep south, really, including rebellions.

      As for the supercomputers, like I said, at least a lot of the stuff that gets pork-barreled in Japan can be useful, unlike here in the US where we spend it in ways that don't benefit society at all. My city just spent millions of tax dollars building a new stadium for our NBA team, when we already have one that just opened in the 90s but turned out to be a boondoggle, and we have an even older stadium that's still usable. But the NBA team controls the old stadium, and doesn't want competition, so we'll probobly end up tearing down the multi-million dollar stadium we built in the 90s. *sigh* I wish they'd just bought a supercomputer instead.

      I suspect this supercomputer thing is a combination of politicians who don't really understand what they're useful for but know "we gotta keep up with the Americans/Euros/Chinese", and a excercise in national competition and good old industry pork. Just like NASA over here. I'm suprised Japan isn't spending more on their space program, especially with China and North Korea advancing in the field... how was the Japanese reaction to the Chinese manned mission, btw? Any serious calls for a Japanese one yet?

    3. Re:Its a government makework project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have no idea what you are talking about. Let me put it in terms you can understand. Computers do math. Math is good for many things. Computers are therefore good for many things.

    4. Re:Its a government makework project by iwadasn · · Score: 1


      First of all, they do have some data. They can simulate the models of weapons they had before and make sure the simulations match up with what actually happened in the test. This sort of thing is also useful for things like fusion/fission reactors, and other far out stuff.

      At the end of the day, it's pure research. There is very little pure research that is not (eventually) worth it. This is a cost that gets to be amortized over the remainder of human civilization, conservatively pegged as at least 100 years.

      The shuttle is hardly a lemon, and the problems it has come from the fact that it pushed well beyond the contemporary technologies of the day. If we did it again, it would be much better. It also largly predated good CAD and DFE analysis tools.

      Look at modern cars for a good example. They are designed down to every last screw by computers. They take less material to make, they are more efficient, and they are more reliable than older cars. The same will be true of the next reusable orbital craft. It will be intensely designed, it will be better than the shuttle in every way, and presumably safer as well.

    5. Re:Its a government makework project by demachina · · Score: 1

      "The same will be true of the next reusable orbital craft. It will be intensely designed, it will be better than the shuttle in every way, and presumably safer as well."

      Actually I think the next shuttle is going to be a capsule, maybe it will be exceptionally well designed but it wont be much different from the ones built 40 years ago. Lockheed wants to build a minime shuttle but everyone is so sick of reusable craft at this point I doubt it has a chance.

      --
      @de_machina
    6. Re:Its a government makework project by demachina · · Score: 1

      Not unless you:

      A. Have good software that does something useful and gives you good answers
      B. You actually do something something useful with the results

      Spending billions to simulate nuclear bombs is a pretty useless waste of money, as are the hundreds or was it thousands of holes they've punched in the Nevada desert and Pacific atolls.

      Its a lot like the original poster and Japan building super bridges to no place in particular. Its something the U.S. started doing, cant stop and if the day every comes again when they are useful it will be a bad day for this planet and the life on it.

      I'm sure all that computer power is potentially useful but most of them are sitting in classified labs which tends to dramaticly limit their use for peacful purposes.

      I guess you missed the point. People these days spend way to much time fiddling with computers for the sake of fiddling with computers and often forget to do anything real with the result, and maybe even have forgotten how to do anything beyond computer simulation.

      --
      @de_machina
    7. Re:Its a government makework project by demachina · · Score: 1

      "First of all, they do have some data. They can simulate the models of weapons they had before and make sure the simulations match up with what actually happened in the test. This sort of thing is also useful for things like fusion/fission reactors, and other far out stuff."

      If they have good real data then why do you need simulations. If the simulations just match what you already know they don't tell you anything. Simulations are only useful when they tell you something you don't already now, and then you do real world tests to see if they match. When they don't then you figure out why. If you spend year after year doing sims with no real tests the sims have great potential to turn in to fantasy, especially as the nuclear stockpile ages beyond anything thats ever been test fired.

      "At the end of the day, it's pure research. There is very little pure research that is not (eventually) worth it."

      If they are studying nuclear reactions that would be of value in producing energy maybe but at the stagnant rate of research in nuclear energy i doubt they are used much for that.

      Pure research in building better nuclear bombs is pure insanity and will never be "worth it". Nuclear bombs are worthless and everyone knows it now, except maybe the Bush administration. They are weapons you can never use without inviting escalation and total annihaliation. North Korea ever uses one on the U.S. North Korea will be incinerated. They are a last use weapon for madmen.

      --
      @de_machina
    8. Re:Its a government makework project by ezthrust · · Score: 1

      Why don't they take all these obsolete super-computers and make one big meta-computer?

    9. Re:Its a government makework project by patio11 · · Score: 1

      Depends on what you mean by serious. They're seriously commited to spending a lot of money to examine the possibility of a manned flight. Otherwise, its going to be the same old satellite missions and piggybacking on NASA ships.

  60. Columbia by RobiOne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't they ever mention the real world stats or operational supercomputers?
    They keep saying BlueGene/L when it's not even completed (maybe it finally is). There's also /C which is falling behind, but at least they're not reporting any numbers until it actually works.

    The fastest operational (like anything else matters) supercomputer is Columbia at NASA. And guess what? It's doing a ton of usefull work, like helping make sure the Space Shuttle launches without a hitch by computing all the Thermal Protection System problems and various other analyses.

    Look at the number of processors it uses and it's performance compared to the others. It's one of the more efficient of the bunch.

    Just wait until they upgrade it..

    Top500 should include different rankings, like efficiency or measurable areas other than projected TFlops. In the end it's not how many you got, but how well you can use them.

    --
    -- Robi
    1. Re:Columbia by maswan · · Score: 3, Informative
      The top500 list only includes existing supercomputers, not future ones. You have to run the benchmark, not guess how fast it will go.

      Now, for a more "realistic" benchmark than hplinpack, this has been tried and talked about for quite some time. It is a hard problem actually, because different supercomputers are designed for different usage. HPL is a useful upper bound for realistic calculations over the whole computer, but it is far from the whole truth.

      The BlueGenes out there have don real work, in doing the signal processing of a distributed radio telescope (the one in the netherlands) and protein folding/molecular dynamics (the US one).

      And while efficiency might be important, remember that if you can get a machine twice as big by going down to 90% of the efficiency for the same price, the smart move is usually, but not always, to buy the larger machine.

      /Mattias Wadenstein - sysadmin at #388 on the list

    2. Re:Columbia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting tidbit: I have a friend working on Blue Gene/C and they said there's no plan to ever release performance numbers on it, even when it's finished: the government customer wants to keep that a secret.

      And you're completely off-base with your remark about the Top500 measurement. The TFlops reported is the effective computation rate on the LinPack benchmark, which is a realistic workload for many supercomputing problems. The Top500 number is the effective computation rate, not some unusable, theoretical limit.

    3. Re:Columbia by backbyter · · Score: 1

      The fastest operational (like anything else matters) supercomputer is Columbia at NASA. And guess what? It's doing a ton of usefull work, like helping make sure the Space Shuttle launches without a hitch by computing BlastOff { if (rocket_fueled) if (crew_in_capsule) if (rocket_pointed_up) // if (fuel_gage_ok) if (countdown 10)...

    4. Re:Columbia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh, looks like you drank a bit too much of the IBM coolaid.

      I agree that linpack is a stupid benchmark, but to say that bluegenes out there have done real work is pretty sad given that other people out there are doing real work.

      The smart move is to buy the hardware that maximises the productivity of your scientists, and I'll let you in on a little secret: it's not massive arrays of 10-year old CPUs! (If it were, do you really think the entire industry would have waited until 2005 before moving to dual-core en masse?) /happy user of #26 on the list :)

    5. Re:Columbia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad SGI is going bankrupt. They haven't made a profit in what, 6 years?

  61. Wow! by Rallion · · Score: 1

    That's almost as powerful as the PS3 will be! Amazing.

  62. Peta is not a greek letter by craXORjack · · Score: 1

    so should it still rhyme with beta, zeta, eta, and theta? Or should it be pronounced like pita bread?

    --
    Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
    1. Re:Peta is not a greek letter by skiflyer · · Score: 1

      none of the above, it's pronounced pet-a (soft a at the end)

    2. Re:Peta is not a greek letter by craXORjack · · Score: 1

      Pita does have a soft a at the end. Are you from England or something? But I take it you are suggesting to pronounce peta- with a soft e as in pet. You wrote as if your pronunciation is official. Is it? Since it is a made-up prefix, did the SI specify this? I don't trust on-line dictionaries because many of them incorrectly list giga- as having a hard g.

      --
      Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
    3. Re:Peta is not a greek letter by skiflyer · · Score: 1

      I was trying to denote the soft e as in pet... same a as in pita.

      No, my pronunciation is not official, but it's both what all dictionaries I've consulted show, and the way every contemporary I've discused petabytes with, including "one of those guys who really should know" and has pbyte as his license plate.

      I know I know, anecdotal, but I'm pretty well convinced at this point.

  63. Lookout for Peloton from LLNL by saratchandra · · Score: 3, Informative
    Recently at the Linux Clusters HPC Conference http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org/Linux-HPC-Re volution/ , I learnt about LLNL's plans(Lawrence Livermore National Labs) for the next biggest supercomputer.

    From what I recall about Peloton(that's what the presenter called it), they wish to have a 14.8 TF/s scalable unit with 4x Infiniband interconnect. This scalable unit itself is more than half the power of Thunder(ranked 7 in Top 500) http://top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2005&M=06 They plan to have 16 such scalable units.

    For those who are interested in the specs: Peloton is 16 SU with 236.5 TeraFLOP/s, 215 TiB memory, 5.0 PB global disk system with 6,720 SMPs and 48+24 = 72 IBA 4x DDR sw. Power is 4.05 MW.

  64. I can just imagine a Beowolf cluster of these :-) by crovira · · Score: 1

    It's probably short out Duluth.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
  65. OMG! by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 1

    A computer that fast could nearly think!

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
  66. Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by reporter · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    On a more serious note, Tokyo should focus its future supercomputer development on projects of national importance. One area which is in vital need of improvement is fighter aircraft.

    The best fighter that Tokyo has built so far is the F-2. It is based on decades-old technology called the American F-16. The F-2, ironically, is even more expensive than the F-15, another decades-old technology.

    Beijing poses a grave threat to Australia, Japan, and other Western nations. In any conflict with Beijing, Tokyo must achieve air superiority. Frankly, the F-2 is unlikely to be adequate for the job even though the F-2 is the pride of the Japanese Self-Defense Force.

    Tokyo should apply its incredible arsenal of home-grown computing power to designing the very best all-Japanese fighter. The key is air superiority against any Chinese or Korean threat. Further, the new Japanese jet fighter must be fast enough to intercept any Chinese strike against Australia. A new Japanese aircraft carrier (armed with these new Japanese fighters) patrolling near Australia should do the trick.

  67. Ya.. sure.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just because I WANT to be a millionaire, doesn't mean it's going to happen. It's like the guy who spends everything he has on his girlfriend, only to lose both her and his job.

  68. Fastest supercomputer by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1, Funny

    I thought the fastest supercomputer was the flux capacitor. You know, at the calculated moment, you start off from down the street driving toward the cable accelerating to 88 miles per hour. According to the flyer, at 10.04pm lightning will strike the clocktower sending 1.21 gigawatts into the flux-capacitor, sending you back to 1985.

    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
    1. Re:Fastest supercomputer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1.21 GIGAWATTS!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!??? A BOLT OF LIGHTNING!!!!

      sorry too many caps gotta tone things down for the filter :o( a bolt of lighting :o(

    2. Re:Fastest supercomputer by CaptainFork · · Score: 1

      Why would I want to go back to 1985. I was there once and that's quite enough 1985 for one lifetime.

  69. Score -1, Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In other news, researchers may have discovered the reason that so many slashdotters are obsessed with encryption and data security.

  70. 1 petaflop = 1 brainsec by iendedi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A computer that fast could nearly think!

    Considering that 1 petaflop roughly= 1 brainsec (the amount of information processing that a typical human brain performs in one second), not only would this computer be fast enough to think, but it should be capable of simulating the brains of 9 human beings, or almost 73 slashdotters with a little bit of idle time on the side.

    --

    It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
  71. Re:WTF is a Teaflop?? by LordEd · · Score: 2, Funny
    A teaflop is a unit of computation speed in reference to the computer in the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy book that got bogged down trying to create a cup of tea.

    A computer with a 500 teaflop capacity is able to produce a perfect cup of tea with just a hint of honey and milk in it in under 2 minutes, while still evading a Vogon fleet.

    Unfortunately, it cannot run Linux.

  72. BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by iendedi · · Score: 4, Funny
    The C in BlueGene/C stands for "Cyclops64", which is the name of the architecture. (It's usually shortened to C64)
    When you read this, are you thinking what I am thinking?
    --

    It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
    1. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by Raul654 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I swear I had to stare at my comment for a solid 10 seconds to figure out why I got modded as funny before it dawned on me. It honestly never occured to me before that C64 could refer to something else.

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    2. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by billieja2 · · Score: 1

      That I need to turn my porn down??

    3. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by deathy_epl+ccs · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get a hot tub filled with gelatin, a ping pong ball and a rubber hose at this time of night? NARF!

    4. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      OK, I stared at it for 10 seconds (more than that, even), but I have no idea why it might be funny. Enlighten me, please? :) Thanks. :)

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    5. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C64 == Commodore 64. ...
      Youngsters.

      Now, where are my dentures?

    6. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      I know *that*... but that doesn't explain why it's funny. :)

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    7. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by McBainLives · · Score: 1

      I thought it was funny, gramps.

      --
      I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
    8. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by AviLazar · · Score: 1

      Commodore 64....ahh the fond memories I have of playing Tank Steel (or some such name).

      --

      I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
    9. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by birdman17 · · Score: 1
      a hot tub filled with gelatin, a ping pong ball and a rubber hose

      I was going to say 500 pounds of broccoli...

    10. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because that means the new supercomputer will be using 20+ year old technology?

    11. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      You still don't understand. :) I don't mean this comment by Raul654:

      The C in BlueGene/C stands for "Cyclops64", which is the name of the architecture. (It's usually shortened to C64)

      That one, of course, is obvious funny. But iendedi's reply to that one has also been modded Funny:

      When you read this, are you thinking what I am thinking?

      That's the one I don't get. What's funny about *that*? Maybe I'm just being a blockhead, but I really can't figure it out.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    12. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by Cervantes · · Score: 1
      The C in BlueGene/C stands for "Cyclops64", which is the name of the architecture. (It's usually shortened to C64)
      When you read this, are you thinking what I am thinking?

      A 64 eyed cyclops? Yeah man, that would be AWESOME! It would totally kick Magnetos ass!

      --
      If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
    13. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 1

      CASE MOD!!!

    14. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by Raul654 · · Score: 1

      Probably because it's exactly what the Brain would say (see Pinky and the Brain)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    15. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by slavemowgli · · Score: 1

      Oh, OK. :) Thanks. :)

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    16. Re:BlueGene/C uses C64 architecture? by vdo2000 · · Score: 1
      When you read this, are you thinking what I am thinking?
      Yes, the next model will be announced as the BlueGene/Amiga but it will never be released.
  73. Why bother? by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

    According to Sony's published specs, the PlayStation 3 will top that number easily!

  74. Japan? by Zorque · · Score: 0, Troll

    More like Paedoflops. Sorry, that's the best I've got.

  75. See, I never understand posts like this.... by raehl · · Score: 1

    If you were to find yourself standing on the golden gate bridge, would you think "Well, somebody is going to jump, so I might as well do it."?

    1. Re:See, I never understand posts like this.... by ki4iib · · Score: 1

      In Soviet Russia, Golden Gate Bridges jump off YOU!!!

  76. folding! by Francis85 · · Score: 1

    HeHee, I wish I could break in this machine once it exists, and somehow get it do some some F@H for me :D

  77. Not sure about Japan by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    But in the US they have real goals with most of the super computers. Nuclear weapons research/testing is a popular one. Apparantly supercomputers are good enough these days to actually test current stockpiles via simulation. This is useful, given that the US is a signatory on a nuclear test-ban, which applies to actual detonations only (you can screw aroudn on camputers all you want, just no actual blowing up of weapons).

    Weather modeling is another favourite.

    As I understand it, all the Blue Gene series are targeted at organic modeling of one kind or another, protein folding, DNA research, etc.

    Now maybe they don't NEED to be built, in the strict sense, but it seems they are just built for no reason. They have specific goals of what they want to try and do with them when they start work on them.

    Not that the government doesn't do things purely to keep skills alive, that's more or less the reason for the US's new attack subs (Virgina class), and it's even been stated as such. They aren't building them very fast, since there's not a real need, but it's useful to slowly modernize the fleet, and you want to keep the industry around and skilled up, so you don't go through a crisis if you suddenly need to get more built.

    However supercomputers do seem to have specific tasks in mind when they are built, they don't just seem to be being built to have big computers around.

  78. teaflop ? Hmmm...sounds yummy by priyajeet · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops" What the heck is a teaflop ? :)

    --
    Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
  79. 1337 by Eric604 · · Score: 1

    I propose that the submissions will be done in leet speak, this would make the spelling mistakes less noticeable .

  80. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by Eugene · · Score: 1

    Although F-2 cost a lot more then the F-16 will ever be, it did saved a lot of money on the initial R&D by adapting a good design, and F-2 is not a simply enlarged version of F-16, it did has a lot of innovation and locally designed components goes too.

    Japanese's military traditionally try to build everything themselves either indigenous design or licensed design, and doing so they achieve technology independence, at the cost of hugely inflated cost.

    It's the same for super computers too.

  81. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you honestly think the USA will let them? Remember pearl harbor? If anyone threatens Japan directly the USA will defiantly defend them. The US economy would be devastated if Japan were attacked.

  82. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    KAMIKAZEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

  83. The world's biggest, fastest, industrial size by Black+Copter+Control · · Score: 2, Funny
    Hot Air Popcorn popper.

    The butter pot is sold separately.

    --
    OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
  84. teaflops? by $cullyshouse · · Score: 0, Redundant

    blue gene can spill 138 cups of tea a second wow!

    --
    Rob http://scullyshouse.tblog.com
  85. Definition of supercomputer getting stretched by heroine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nowadays the supercomputer contest is just a matter of who can buy the most Opteron PC's and Cisco routers from Newegg and connect them. You might as well buy a few million DVD's from Best Buy and say you have the world's largest hard drive.

    Eventually small countries will connect all the computers of their entire population with distributed clients and call that the world's largest supercomputer.

    This business of entering a command, waiting a minute for zillions of nodes across a slow network to start, and waiting another minute for all the nodes to finish is hardly what supercomputing used to be.

    It would be more interesting to see who does the most work with the least latency or who does the most work with the simplest programming model. Anyone can write a massively parallel program to utilize every Opteron in the world but a computer which can do the same work sequentially seems like a much bigger step forward.

    1. Re:Definition of supercomputer getting stretched by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're stupid. Distributed computing doesn't perform well on linpack because of communication latency. The top500 list is ordered by linpack performance.

    2. Re:Definition of supercomputer getting stretched by sharkdba · · Score: 1

      I thought your post was interesting up to this statement:

      Anyone can write a massively parallel program...

      We must be from different worlds or something. In my world anyone (OK, let's limit "anyone" to "anyone within the programming community") can write a sequential program, but parallel programming is so much more complex, only a few know how to do it.

      Unless I misunderstood your post...

      --
      The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
  86. Knowing Japan... by CZA2006 · · Score: 1

    They'll probably turn it into some super hentai-server.

    1. Re:Knowing Japan... by InsideTheAsylum · · Score: 1

      petachan.org

  87. Re:Please edit caption from... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How the hell is this a troll?? It's useful, transforming the original statement from a semi-literate burble into an understandable form!

    Seriously, you people need to learn to spell; communicating information is why language exists, and if you're unable to convey an idea in a sufficiently clear manner, then that renders you incompetent to convey information.

  88. 10 PFIPS.. so what does that really mean? by Timberwolf0122 · · Score: 1

    FIPS like MIPS is meaningless as alot of it is dependent on how many intructions it takes to calculate a result. If the CPUs are RISC based complex operations will take considerably longer than the same setup with CISC (and as for patern searching both would be slower than a similar speced ZISC set up!)

    --
    In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
    1. Re:10 PFIPS.. so what does that really mean? by be-fan · · Score: 1

      It'sn ot FIPS, it's FLOPS. A "FLOP" is pretty much accepted these days as an IEEE754 double-precision operation. The nature of these operations don't differ to much between modern processors.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  89. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you insane?!! Japanese poses a threat to ALL of its Asian neighbors -- The Japanese Government, not the people. If you understand ANYTHING about the Japanese people & their governemnt, the HISTORY of the region, and OTHER Asian people and their history --- You wouldn't make such a blanketed and IDIOTIC statement you just did.

    Can't some people GO OUTSIDE once in a while. Have a look. The rest of the world is "not out to get you" so you can put your MISSILES, NUKES, BIOLOGICAN & CHEMICAL weapons back in storage.

    The rest of the world is trying to move towards peace --- Why must some people be constant war-mongers?!

  90. A computer is digital; the brain isn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the comparison between Petaflops and brainseconds is arbitrarily made and fundamentally flawed.

    In pure calculating power computers have surpassed the human brain ages ago. I know nobody who can do a floating point operation in less then a second, much less 10 gazillion Flops. this is not the limiting factor for AI, though.

    AI algorithms have to overcome the fact that they are based on digital technology. The brain is analogue. We think not black and white, zero or one, but in shades of grey.

    1. Re:A computer is digital; the brain isn't by iendedi · · Score: 1
      I think the comparison between Petaflops and brainseconds is arbitrarily made and fundamentally flawed. In pure calculating power computers have surpassed the human brain ages ago. I know nobody who can do a floating point operation in less then a second, much less 10 gazillion Flops. this is not the limiting factor for AI, though. AI algorithms have to overcome the fact that they are based on digital technology. The brain is analogue. We think not black and white, zero or one, but in shades of grey.
      A floating point number is not a one or a zero. The comparison between flops (floating point operations per second) and brain-seconds is actually sound in this regard. Think fuzzy logic using floats.
      --

      It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
  91. Aready? by Andy_R · · Score: 1

    It's a bit early for PlayStation 4 hype isn't it?

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  92. Re:WTF is a Teaflop?? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

    Actually it's only able to produce a liquid which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. That's why it's a teaflop: A failure to make tea.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  93. MOD PARENT UP! by spot35 · · Score: 1

    That is classic! I was going to reply with a similar comment about the runner beans giving the Lima beans a chance...

  94. Me too!11 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I want a girlfriend..

  95. Wow.... by Gibsnag · · Score: 1

    Imagine a Beowulf clu....

    Sorry.

  96. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you actually doubt that the Japs could build better aircraft than the Americans if you let them? Maybe you should read up on some of the terms of surrender imposed on Japan after the war - there's no area of engineering that Japan couldn't beat the US in if it so desired.

  97. Played the Beta... by wild_berry · · Score: 1

    It's time for kicking ass and chewing gum.
    You have 0 gums in your inventory.
    Exits are North, South, Down.
    >_

  98. I would rather... by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 1

    measure supercomputers in logic inferences, not in floating point operations. We can hardly build an AI from nuclear simulations or weather maps.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
  99. Am I alone? by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one who read the headline and thought, "Why the hell are the japanese wanting 10 supercomputers?"

    I just figured they wanted to hold the world's fastest LAN party.

    --
    I8-D
  100. Earth Simulator is only 4th?! by Tomfrh · · Score: 1

    Wow, this list moves fast. Last time I checked (admittedly about a year ago), the earth simulator was flogging everyone.

  101. If you can make a beowulf cluster of white mice... by voss · · Score: 1

    You would really be on to something :)

  102. Re:WTF is a Teaflop?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you put honey in milky tea it tastes like something died in the cup.

    Fructose is the stuff - sweetness without the burn.

  103. The Singularity is Nigh(er)! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only a matter of time before the Singularity is set to exponentially increase our scientific growth and knowledge. This recent news just conforms to predictions that (source wikepedia.org) by 2013 computing will outreach that of the Human brain.

    WHOOPPEEE - I can life forever

  104. want vs. need. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Japan should learn the valuable lesson between 'want' and 'need'.

    Come on japan. yesterday you begged me for five bucks for taco-bell. today you're belly-aching how you want to buy that Futurama dvd.

    I'm sick of you nickel and dimeing me to death. If you don't quit it we're not going to hang anymore.

  105. japan and speed ! by chrisranjana.com · · Score: 0

    Yes japanese has always been fascinated with speed !

    --
    Chris ,
    Php Programmers.
  106. Getting it right by darkbit · · Score: 1

    "Current fastest [publically ackknowledged] supercomputer is the partially finished Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops and the target when finished is 360 teraflops."

  107. Obligatory by nunofgs · · Score: 0

    Cue the 'but does it run linux?' comments ...

  108. Because . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops

    . . . they are tired of being slashdotted.

  109. Setting the bar low by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 1


    10 Petaflops? Why, that's barely half what Sony has claimed the PS3 will be capable of...

  110. exaflops? by peter303 · · Score: 1

    Petaflops is so early 21st century. Got to talk in exaflops now.

  111. image a beawulf cluster of these! by peter303 · · Score: 1

    I havent seen this lame joke in while.

  112. blue gene by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    well it makes you think what the dept of energy and nnsa want with such a monster..... i don't know.. with that much parallel computing... leaves you to wonder? hmm....... i always like watching the ppl through my tv :)

  113. Man... Pathetic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No...

    You MUST read the journals and reports in super computing field
    at the time of ESC appears in Japan. US researchers were hysteric
    about "We don't have bigger penis". Meanwhile Japanese researchers
    was quite on their pace saying "This is for world peace, everyone?"

    I'm sure You got the as small as US researchers but your ego is huge...

  114. Grid Computers by JavaNerd · · Score: 1

    Do these fastest super computer claims take into account grid or other distributed computing? An example that comes to mind is the computers running SETI@home could be thought of as a SETI@home super computer. It would only be fair to include such "virtual" super computers for a true comparison.

  115. Re:Serious Note: Japanese Fighter Aircraft by coopex · · Score: 1

    How about microprocessors?

    --
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
  116. Computer Vision by iendedi · · Score: 1

    The reason that computer vision isn't a reality is that everyone has approached it the wrong damned way. I am also an AI researcher and I have the solution to computer vision. The answer is computer imagination.

    Think of it as a guessing game (and please watch yourself do the same thing). Imagine that there is a feedback loop within the Computer Vision AI. First, it takes the images from it's sensors and does a first-pass using traditional techniques. Second, it uses that first pass to provide hints to form a 3D computer model of what it is seeing. It renders the model and compares against what it sees. From the point of first comparison, we must use a combination of hill-climbing and a noisy search (such as a constrained genetic algorithm) to attempt to identify models to be included and refine the 3D model that represents the current scene. The goal is to get the rendered scene to match the perceived scene by making informed guesses and refining the model. The result, after enough iterations, is a reasonably accurate semantic representation of what is being perceived. Like human vision, this type of computer vision will never be 100% accurate (unless the models in the database are complete and the system is provided with large numbers of brain-sec cycles to figure the complete scene out), but it doesn't need to be 100% accurate to correctly analyze the most important elements in it's vision.

    Humans do something very similar to this, and our feedback mechanism includes very complex analysis (Is that Joe? I can't see his full profile, but that looks like his nose.. No... That's not Joe, his chin is pointier... Maybe that's his brother?)

    For AI, always think IMAGINATION and COMPARISON, FEEDBACK, EMERGENT COMPLEXITY and FRACTAL PROCESSING (Meaning that processing networks are combined to form more powerful processing networks in combinatorial patterns that are self-similar at different zooms).

    --

    It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving