Slashdot Mirror
Iran Builds Supercomputer From Banned AMD Parts
Stony Stevenson writes with the news that, despite a ban on US PC hardware, Iranian techs have built an enormously powerful supercomputer from 216 AMD processors. The Linux-cluster machine has a 'theoretical peak performance of 860 gig-flops'. "The disclosure, made in an undated posting on [the University of] Amirkabir's Web site, brought an immediate response Monday from AMD, which said it has never authorized shipments of products either directly or indirectly to Iran or any other embargoed country."
"The Iranian supercomputer falls far behind the world's fastest computers. In November, the BlueGene/L System, jointly developed by IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy was ranked No. 1 in the world with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion calculations per second."
Indeed, the article mentions at the end that it falls far behind the rest of the world. In fact, to make the Top 500 this year you had to have a supercomputer worthy of 5.9 Teraflops.
"Which stops someone just driving over the border to the nearest country which doesn't have such sanctions and filling up their car with equipment... how exactly?" ...not much... hence the report that they have said supercomputer. someone made the trip. duh.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
And so does Christianity and Judaism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury#Usury_within_religious_texts
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Actually the link is an Australian repost of an American media story. Here's the original (as linked in the Australian repost): http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204800653&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All
Just to point out your history of Iran, please don't act like the US was clean. The US ally you referred to that ruled Iran was installed by the US government after an operation by the CIA to overthrow a freely elected leader. To Iran, the US is seen as terrorists, mostly for meddling with the sovereignty (sp?) of other nations.
You are wrong.
Google the news on Iran and that latest CIA report that says Iran stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003. Guess what you'll find -- the EU, France, Germany and others basically saying the U.S. intelligence is flawed and Iran is a much greater nuclear threat than that report states.
France and Germany are pushing for harsher sanctions than the U.N. ones. They want separate EU sanctions on Iran, and still call their nuclear program "a threat".
The Middle East nations all are fearful of Iran as is, and terrified of them having nuclear weapons. Arabs != Persians.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Hehe, last time I (and some others) checked, Iranian leader did not in fact threaten to wipe anything off the map. It turned out to be a mistranslation by a bunch of incompetent journalists.
Except he never actually said that.
Iran has vowed to annihilate Israel, which is an (undeclared) nuclear power.
That's actually not true (vowing to annihilate Israel). This misconception started from a speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that was translated incorrectly by the BBC. It has been translated correctly afterwards, but the BBC (and 99% of western media which gladly jumped on their story) never apologized and straightened the mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad#Anti-Israel_statements
I'm not saying he's a nice guy though.
If Iran ever really gets close, the facilities are going to be taken out by the IDF.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Thank you. That "wipe off the map" quote was deliberate translation disinformation, folks.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I think the problem of the massive infrastructure needed to create weapons grade fissionables and the use of supercomputers to model weapon designs goes hand-in-hand. If a nation has limited fissionable material available, they're going to want to build the most efficient design possible. Though most current US weapons were designed before the era of modern computing, the US had the luxury of data gathered from hundreds of atmospheric and underground tests to apply to those designs; a luxury which states like Iran obviously don't have. Sure, Iran doesn't need a bomb that can fit in a suitcase, but if they were pursuing nuclear weapons, they would want a weapon that doesn't waste a huge amount of fissile material and had some chance of fitting in a realistic delivery system, and a Fat Man copy isn't it.
Is it possible to build an efficient, relatively compact (i.e. deliverable by cruise or ballistic missile or by fighter aircraft) weapon with no access to live test data and only modern consumer-grade computing power? Probably, but a supercomputer would make things quite a bit easier.
And they had a popularly elected government overthrown with the aid of the CIA. A brutal dictator was installed afterwards. (Shah) Easy enough to see the U.S. as double-talking bad guys.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
Why would Judaism, with circa 14 million adherents, be considered one of "the 3 major religions" while excluding Hinduism with circa 900 million adherents as a major religion?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Um, I'm no fan of the current theocracy in Iran, but let's not pretend that it was a paradise before the 79 revolution, but they had a secret police, SAVAK, torture of dissidents, unlimited power to arrest and detain any opposition to the Shah.
So, sure, things have gotten worse now, a theocracy is basically the worst case scenario for forms of government, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Shah was set up by the US, UK, and the CIA, and was responsible for some pretty awful stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
So let's recap: The US ran a covert operation and overthrew a democratically elected prime minister, to protect US interests (read: Oil companies). The guy the put in turns out to be fond of things like arbitrary arrest/detention and torture, so after the Iranian people threw him out on his ass, what the fuck do Americans expect Iranians to think of Americans?
And, were it any other country, most of us on slashdot would be saying that the Shah DESERVED to be overthrown. We may not like the successor, but let's not pretend that the Shah and his government didn't have it coming.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 *
However supercomputers have now progressed to the point that you can actually TEST a bomb all in software.
This is inaccurate.
The basic nuclear design tools are finite element modeling and Monte Carlo simulations. With larger and larger number of elements modeled, you can get more and more accurate simulations in the same timeframe, so that the model has closer and closer resemblance to experimental reality. You also need some baseline data; some of that is declassified, some can be obtained experimentally on smaller scale using neutron beams, lasers, and high explosives. But the most important data on the high efficiency yield properties, and the algorithmic optimizations allowing rapid and detailed simulations, remain classified.
Even with a supercomputer design, without an actual test, you can't be sure your extrapolations and simulations will be as good as you hope. Getting a nuclear explosion isn't the real challenge; it's making one that's efficient. (This may have been North Korea's problem; sub-kiloton yields can result if you make a mistake.) However, a good computer lets you get a better idea of the sorts design variants you want to play with before you go risking your very expensively obtained fissionables on a test explosion.
But basic work and a rough model once you have the basic materials data? Two days on the HP-49 calculator, including programming time. A 7x7x7 element model gives you numbers that will be within 10% of the final... which does translate into an order of magnitude difference in possible yield, but anything from 1 to 100 kilotons still gets attention.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.