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Award of $200M Supercomputer To IBM Proving Controversial

Posted by Zonk on from the bidding-is-just-another-super-element dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to documents accidentally placed on a federal government Web site for a short time last week the national science foundation (NSF) will award the contract to buy a $200M supercomputer in 2011 to IBM. The machine is designed to perform scientific calculations at sustained speed of 1 petaflop. The award is already proving controversial however, with questions being raised about the correctness of the bidding procedure. Similar concerns have also been raised about the award of a smaller machine to Oak Ridge national lab, which is a Department of Energy laboratory, not a site one would expect to house an NSF machine."

9 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Because... by mr_beanz · · Score: 5, Funny

    No-one ever got fired for buying IBM!

    1. Re:Because... by obsolete1349 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I did . . . Now I have to eat soup at the kitchen down the street... and to keep warm, I have to stand by a trash fire.

  2. Is there a supercomputer powerful enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...to stop Zonk from posting boring, pointless articles?

    I'd prefer if HAL didn't open the pod bay doors, if Zonk were out there.

  3. petaflop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    1 Petaflop?

    Were any animal rights activists harmed in the design or manufacture of this computer?

    1. Re:petaflop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I hope so.

      I just get so mad at them when they try to tell me not to eat animals. If god didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste like meat? If he wanted us to eat only vegetables, Wouldn't he make them taste like meat too?

  4. hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    A NSF machine? I wonder what a Not Safe for Work machine would have on it? PORN!

  5. at least it'll run linux by martin-boundary · · Score: 2, Funny

    Given that IBM's strategy is to try to run linux on all its hardware, there's a good chance that the supercomputer will be running a version of linux. Expect Ballmer to be sending several chairs by express courier to the NSF in short order.

  6. Re:What are the alternatives? by Nullav · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Dude, you're gettin' a Cray!"

    --
    I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  7. Unnecessary by fan+of+lem · · Score: 5, Funny

    Aw c'mon, we all know it will only output 42.