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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."

2 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Blue Gene/P by draxbear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seems a good bet it's a Blue Gene/P.
    http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/217 91.wss

    --
    --- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
  2. Re:The DOE bit by vought · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Perhaps this is a foolish question, but are there a lot of dead cycles on a high end supercomputer?

    Obviously you've never worked for a government contractor. A stage example:

    1: CONTRACTOR, pacing in an untidy OFFICE filled with EQUIPMENT: "We need to order, configure and install this thing at 12/10s speed to meet deadline! Where the f*ck is the chimp from the CDW ads????"

      (CRICKETS sing ...six weeks pass)

    2: CHIEF SCIENTIST, inside raised floor lab filled with immaculate, slab-sided computing machines: "Hey, can we use this thing to run some Mandelbrot sets?"

    PHYSICAL PLANT GUY: "Not until we upgrade the chillers."
    UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT: "I'm not sure we can afford that!"

    3: TOUSLED-HAIRED SCIENTIST, in grimy, pizza and book-strewn home: "If only I could get enough cycles to build my next great open source project...we could save the world from the impending unnamed crisis! Crap!"

    SCIENTIST'S CAT:(forbiddingly) "Meow-rarwerews"

    4: BUSH SCIENCE ADVISOR in a rather spare-looking OFFICE without a COMPUTER: "Let's shut this (supercomputer) thing down. We can shunt the money off to a lobbyist, and rake in 200% on the backend for our downstream contractors. What, Lockheed is on the phone? Hang on..." FADE OUT

    5: VIEW OF EARTH FROM ORBIT. EARTH BLOWS UP. (Maybe use coal dust as per George Lucas)

    6: FIN