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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."
Its not too hard to just buy a bunch of used PC and ship them there, is it?
Somehow, those clever bastards managed to buy a bunch of highly esoteric computer parts that I can run down to a local computer shop and pick up for at most a couple hundred bucks a pop. What evil persons could have sold them all those processors?
The breathless panic in the American media about everything Iran does is getting a little old.
10 years ago, yes. But, seriously, it takes only about $30k to build a tera-scale system with commodity parts. And, if single precision is OK, $2400 will get you 900 "gig-flops" worth of PS3s. Last time I went through Bahrain, you could buy those in the airport for your kids, so they shouldn't be too hard for the Iranian government to buy.
Not sure what the story is here...
-Chris
Here we go again.
Why do all that work to achieve a theoretical peak performance of 860 GFlops, when a IBM Cell processor has a theoretical peak around 1000 GFlops?
My point is that the theoretical maximum speed rating, all by itself, doesn't fully characterize the relevant performance of a given computer for the computations which it's intended to perform.
Or maybe the Iranians really should just make a trip to Best Buy...
Seriously, I'm getting tired of governments who are scaring their citizens about Iran's threat to this world. I'm glad they were able to achieve this despite all the embargoes against them.
...the implosion dynamics of the fission weapon they aren't building.
Don't you get it. We have to be afraid of Iran. They are a threat. Ahmidnidaklsjadeasred, whatever, wants to end civilization as we know it!! With this SUPERCOMPUTER they could calculate the exact coordinates of New York and bomb it into oblivion!! (end sarcasm)
Seriously though, Iran is a scapegoat for US politicians. They can't handle, politically, the fact that their foreign policy initiatives fail consistently in the Middle East. They need a shadowy, vageuly evil figure to pit the fear of the electorate against the critical thinking of the electorate, which is the side that says invasions, coups, and exploitation aren't working. If it weren't for the Iran, the Iraq war would have zero political viability. Instead, Iran provides a "threat" so it becomes politically viable to call for indefinite troop deployment.
This is a most bizarre case of symbiotism. Ahmadinejade is pretty much an idiot (see no gays in Iran comment) who doesn't really have all that special of a record. Is he a threat to world civilization, probably not. He does, however, say enough dumb things that he gives political capital to his enemies in the west. His enemies in the west return the favor by imposing sanctions, threatening pre-emptive attacks, etc. It's a twisted quid pro quo kind of thing. He gets to appeal to Iranian nationalism against the threat of American attack, and the White House gets to appeal to Americans' fears of an evil terrorist state with nukes and a supercomputer.
Moral of the story is that fear, uncertainty, and doubt breeds political power. Any time someone tells you to be afraid, take it with a grain of salt.
I got a catholic block.
The idea that you can somehow 'ban' a country from getting ahold of a commodity is ludicrious and stupid. The only way you could really do that would be to effectively seal and close their borders militarily and embargo them to the point that you controlled all of their travel and trade outside of their borders. Good luck with that.
Why Iran is not (apparently) allowed to have nuclear energy, or high powered computers? Have they ever detonated a computer guided nuclear weapon in someone else's country?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
"Trying to ban computer chips from reaching anyone who wants to buy them is like trying to ban corn, oil, gas, rice, or soybeans."
Those are easier to interdict because they are bulk products. A shipping container of computer parts is small and easy to send most anywhere.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Iran has vowed to annihilate Israel, which is an (undeclared) nuclear power. It would be impossible for Iran to have anything resembling a chance of doing so without effective nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them, and impossible to get a nuke working reliably without testing it. (Imagine if you're Ahmadine-Jihad and your nuke misfires, showering undetonated uranium over downtown Tel Aviv; not only has your glorious jihad failed before it ever began, but you are, to all intents and purposes, screwed.)
Were Iran to test a nuclear weapon in real life, they would get noticed pretty quickly (the seismic readings would see to that), and a preemptive strike would soon follow. (Once there is no doubt that the Iranians are working on nuclear weapons, there'd be little resistance to ensure that they don't succeed; it's not only the US, Europe and Israel who are worried, but their Sunni Islamic neighbours, regarded by them as apostates, are none too comfortable with a nuclear-armed Iran. Add to that Ahmadine-Jihad's support of the concept of martyrdom (the Iranian government actually recruits suicide bombers for jihadist attacks against US/Jewish/Sunni interests), and you've got the sort of nuclear power that can't be trusted to do the sensible thing and sit on its nukes as a defensive weapon of last resort.
As such, supercomputing power of this sort would be vitally important in running nuclear simulations and perfecting a bomb.
Most US nuclear weapons were designed using computers under 1 MIPS. Even the fusion bombs. About 40 years ago, I was visiting a UNIVAC 1105 installation (the biggest all-vacuum-tube computer ever built as a commercial product, designed when Gen. Leslie Groves was at UNIVAC), and they'd done some work on bomb design. It took about two days per run, and they'd run the program at the same time some other location was running it. Every three hours, the console typewriter would print out a checksum, and they'd phone the other location to see if it matched. If not, they had to back up to the last checkpoint tape and restart.
This huge machine was comparable in power to a PC/AT with an FPU chip; a good 1985 desktop.
The silly thing about export controls on computers is that the U.S. Government keeps increasing the control threshold for "supercomputers". The current threshold is 750 gigaflops, which is a few racks of servers. In 1995, it was 2 gigaflops, or about where a low-end PC is today. Back in 1987, there was a big flap when Iran tried to get hold of a VAX 8600, which is about 0.005 gigaflops. But bomb design isn't getting any more difficult.
Any modern laptop can do the calculations necessary for bomb design. Deal with it.
that doesn't bother you?
whether pro-usa, or anti-usa, or pro-israel, or anti-israel, this should bother you, regardless
i'm sorry, but in this world, very little concepts frighten me more than a theocracy with nukes
and i'm not talking about the loose propagandistic label of "theocracy" one might apply to say, the usa, because the current president (who will soon be gone) is a conservative southern baptist. i'm talking about an actual, stated, as clearly implied in the constitution, theocracy. as in, our government serves god and those unelected grumpy old men over there interpret what he wants. the real deal, a real genuine clearly stated theocracy
any rational human being should feel threatened by a theocracy with nukes. regardless of any of your other concerns in the middle east, or any of your other politics in general
http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/Government/constitution.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Or they announce they have it, so if inspectors come by they're not shocked by this 216 processor beast and going "You never declared you had this! Nuclear tests! Nuclear tests!!"
Easier to swap out programs (even if it means interrupting a test) than it is hiding a computer.
Just sayin as a counterpoint...
part of their resistance to giving up their nuke program rests squarely on simply being insulted that they should listen to anyone but themselves about what to do
ok, fine, i respect that independence and fierce pride
however, i don't think i could be very proud of myself if my tech consisted of stuff i stole from my archnemesis. national pride i think must rest on something stronger than "ha ha! i stole your stuff!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously, does anyone really think that any country in the world can be prevented from acquiring ~200 PCs?
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Well, I feel less threatened from Iran than I feel from the US. I met several Iranians and they are decent folks. Never ever did any of them mention that they consider themselves to be the world police, the sole superpower or the number one.
They just recently came out of a revolution which got rid of a dictatorship (people fighting for their freedom, you might have heard about it...). I would give them some time to get to a stable situation and to develop a democratic tradition.
Fact is that they already have more women in their parliament than most western countries.
Oh, and I would not hesitate to sell them all the CPUs they desire. This is because I live in a free country and neither US propaganda nor US law applies to me.
(P.S.: Do not ask. We do not want you.)
So the Iranians strung together 216 previous-gen 2GHz Opterons... Big freaking deal. This is not exactly rocket science; it's all off-the-shelf commodity stuff, both hardware and software. I know several university research groups that have more computing power than that, let alone supercomputer centers.
If they field a machine in the tens of teraflops, *then* there might be some cause for alarm...
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Jokes aside, the last thing any country not so friendly to the US wants to do is running an operating system filled with US government mandated spyware/trojans. The use of an OSS operating system such as Linux is the only way to ensure their data won't be uploded to Washington or, in an unconnected system, strange things won't happen if, say, the timezone and language settings should match Iran.
Unfortunately many western US-friendly nations are exposed to that problem too, though in a different way (corporate+military vs military alone espionage).
go ahead and feel threatened by israel all you want, be my guest
but do it for valid reasons, not propaganda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How exactly is their form of government supposed to be any more of a threat with nuclear weapons than any other form of governance which posseses nuclear weapons? Why is a constitutional theocracy more dangerous to the world than a 'democracy' ruled by theocrats?
Are the leaders of a theocracy any less motivated by desire for wealth and power? Are they more suicidal than a theocrat, or any other politician, ruling a democracy?
I haven't seen anything in your argument showing why a theocracy is more of a danger with nukes beyond using "theocracy" as a magic fearphrase like "think-of-the-children" etc.
Sarkozy is busy sucking Bush's cock, but he's not going to do anything, unless he wants to end up with a case of severed head like the roitelet he thinks he is.
I post some litehearted humor and my reputation goes from "Positive" to "Bad" in one day.
No offense but the moderation system here is a joke.
to familiarize yourself with the customs, habits, and government of countries you're considering invading.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The US government?
Nuke design? Psssh.
I'm pretty damn sure they didn't have supercomputers when they built the Trinity test bomb. In fact, your average cell phone is probably more powerful than the combined computing power of all the computers in existence back in 1945. Hydrogen bombs came not long thereafter (in fact, I believe Teller came up with the basic design while the Manhattan project was still underway), and are therefore similarly non-computationally-expensive to design.
I'm sure there are a few exciting, new complicated nuke designs that require supercomputers, but supercomputers simply are not a factor in determining whether a country can go nuclear or not--raw materials, refining machinery, and scientists are.
I'm not a computer nerd, but can someone elaborate why it only required a fraction of the current supercomputer power to simulate nuclear weapons 30 years ago? Wasn't that kind of processing power restricted from being exported at that time? Have computer algorithms actually deteriorated so that they would require more power to be effective now than a few decades back? Isn't a simple Intel Pentium of today more capable than a Cray supercomputer of say, 30 years ago which was banned for export precisely because it could be used to simulate nuclear weapons? If you could simulate nuclear explosions on a Pentium (Today's Pentium = Cray of 70s) why would you need something more powerful? I mean sure if you are looking to maximize the yield on your weapons beyond the current state of the art, fine. But otherwise it seems to me that you shouldn't need an elaborate setup.
there, fixed that for you.
Elections don't change anything else they would be banned.
that aside, thanks for the informative post.