Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Iran Builds Supercomputer From Banned AMD Parts

Posted by Zonk on from the maybe-they-fell-off-the-back-of-a-really-big-truck dept.

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."

11 of 778 comments (clear)

  1. "Enormously Powerful" by rockmuelle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:"Enormously Powerful" by phoenixwade · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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 My guess: The real story is that the joiurnalist and his/her editors couldn't wrap their noodles around the idea that that anyone except a select fer universities and think tanks could build a machine that can produce theoretical "Giga-"s.... And are equally clueless that the "Banned AMD technology" is anything more than commodity pc parts.....
      --
      A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
  2. Good for them by Sylvak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. They are the Boogeymen! by explosivejared · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:They are the Boogeymen! by 0xABADC0DA · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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. Calling somebody who apparently was in the top 99.9% on his college entrance exams and with a degree in civil engineering and Ph.D in transportation engineering an idiot is 'pretty much' lame. He may not be wise, or may be too religiously conservative for us, but I seriously doubt he's so stupid. More likely he is pandering to the Arabs for good will by agreeing with them on the subjects they care most about. You know, the people that actually live in the same region.

      It seems he gets mistranslated a lot too, like about the wiping off the map, or about there not being gays like in the US. Maybe he meant as in with their own parades and being in everybody's face... although I hear that the Iranians watching also laughed at that one. I don't know, but it sounds to me like an Al Gore "invented the internet" kind of spin.
    2. Re:They are the Boogeymen! by jackpot777 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What IF Iran finds unicorns that poo gold bars?

      Because if America is basing foreign policy on hypothetical situations that are contradicted by real intelligence reports / common sense, just imagine what Iran could do IF they had enough unicorn poo gold to destabilize the dollar blah blah Amero blah SuperInterstateHighway the width of Manhattan blah blah tin foil hats blah Ron Paul?

      They have guns. And yet they don't shoot across the Iraqi border with reckless abandon. And North Korea has the bomb, and yet South Korea still steadfastly refuses to be a glass ashtray.

      Hmmmm.

      --
      Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
    3. Re:They are the Boogeymen! by galoise · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ehem, isn't israel "a bunch of religious radicals with nuclear bombs" too? actually... i'd say that a country that even remotely considers discussion of creationist views as part of their science curricula a bunch of religiuos radicals... why is Iran religious radicalness worse than israel's or USA's?

      --
      entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
    4. Re:They are the Boogeymen! by AxeTheMax · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Last time I checked, Israel had invaded neighbouring countries several times - 1956 (Egypt), 1966 (Egypt, Syria, Jordan), 1978, 0982 and 2006 (Lebanon). Iran has invaded no one, not in the ayatollah's period, and not for decades or perhaps even centuries before that. It has however been invaded by Iraq (1980), with the aggressive support of the US, one feature of which was an unprovoked shooting down of a civilian airliner over open sea by the US Navy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_6550. They have reason if they feel paranoid.

  4. You cannot ban commodities, it just doesn't work by GnarlyDoug · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Computer chips are now commodities. Back in the day they weren't, but the times moved on. Trying to ban computer chips from reaching anyone who wants to buy them is like trying to ban corn, oil, gas, rice, or soybeans. It's just not going to happen. These computer chips are sold around the world in bulk quantities at low prices. In addition most of these things aren't even manufactured on US soil anymore.

    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.

  5. Could someone explain by pembo13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. It just doesn't matter by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.