Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hawking Is First User of "Big Brain" Supercomputer

Posted by samzenpus on from the big-machines dept.

miller60 writes "Calling your product the 'Big Brain Computer' is a heady claim. It helps if you have Dr. Stephen Hawking say that the product can help unlock the secrets of the universe. SGI says its UV2 can scale to 4,096 cores and 64 terabytes of memory, with a peak I/O rate of four terabytes per second and runs off-the-shelf Linux software. Hawking says the UV2 'will ensure that UK researchers remain at the forefront of fundamental and observational cosmology.'"

14 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. hawking's been hacked. by notgm · · Score: 5, Funny

    i'm convinced that someone else is controlling what his computer-chair-interface says. perhaps it's even...bum bum bum....a super advanced AI, tricking us all into giving it access to a supercom...oh no! it's too late!

    1. Re:hawking's been hacked. by grouchomarxist · · Score: 4, Informative

      From the article it sounds like it. I find it hard to believe that Hawking wrote the line "soon to be supercharged with Intel’s MIC technology" they have him quoted as saying. Sounds like a PR flack programmed his speak-and-spell.

    2. Re:hawking's been hacked. by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Funny

      I find it hard to believe that Hawking wrote the line

      Me too. Maybe dictated.

    3. Re:hawking's been hacked. by ciderbrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I never expected Germaine Greer to be used on this board.
      Regardless of the impression given, there is a need for celebrity scientists. Second rate scientist with a first rate promotional skill is just what the TV needs. Plus the promotion time couldn't be better spent in the lab either.
      These people inspire the young to become scientists and raise public awareness for what ever cause made the news that week.

      How on earth did you bring Germaine Greer into this? That's wonderful..

  2. Too bad SGI was gutted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's really too bad that the company currently known as SGI has only the name in common with the SGI of yore. Truly some pioneering work done there, although they did fail to keep up with the "G" portion of their name in the late 90s. Imagine what the world would look like had they bought out nVidia way back when? Probably, we'd all be running SGI video cards, and Monoprice would sell Craylink cables. Microsoft would be a struggling software company, Linux would still be a pipe dream, and SVR4 (with some BSD stirred in for good measure) would pretty well rule the world.

    Well, maybe. It's nice to imagine...

  3. I've wondered... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I assume that most great cosmologists aren't expert computer programmers with specialties in high performance computation, and that most great programmers specializing in high performance computation aren't great cosmologists.

    So how do these people get their ridiculously complicated physics stuff crunched by ridiculously complicated machines?

    1. Re:I've wondered... by sleiper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So how do these people get their ridiculously complicated physics stuff crunched by ridiculously complicated machines?

      Because they know the equations for their ridiculously complicated physics stuff, and most physicists are expected to be literate with computer programming. I have two PhD friends, both in Physics (meteorology and cosmology) who are now both hardcore coders due to their training.

  4. Re:Off the shelf Linux? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is the standard linux kernel optimised for 4096 cores...?

    Imagine a Beowulf Cluster ...

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  5. Wrong. Both LInux and MS would be doing fine by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    because

    A) Silicon graphics had little influence one way or the other on the progress of Linux (or Windows so the same applies) even when they were a big player.

    and

    B) Your average home user would not be willing to pay the multi thousand dollar price tag of an SGI system just to have a version of Unix wirth decent graphics at home.

    Unfortunately both SGI and to a lesser extent Sun missed the signs that x86 PCs were going to rapidly catch up woth the abilities of their workstations and instead of dropping prices to sane levels continued to carry on business as usual as if it was still 1990. And the end result is what you see.

    1. Re:Wrong. Both LInux and MS would be doing fine by MiniMike · · Score: 4, Informative

      Unfortunately both SGI and to a lesser extent Sun missed the signs that x86 PCs were going to rapidly catch up woth the abilities of their workstations and instead of dropping prices to sane levels continued to carry on business as usual as if it was still 1990. And the end result is what you see.

      As a general statement, if they had kept up their research with their own processors, instead of trying to catch a ride on the Itanic they would have kept ahead on capability for quite a while longer. It wasn't really that they missed the signs, it was that they stopped their own progress to all get on the same bus, not noticing that it was in the slow lane, with its blinkers on and belching smoke. By the time it got up to speed, x86 had already whizzed by.

  6. Excess CPU cycles? by cvtan · · Score: 2

    The British government can use this system to keep track of what everyone other than Hawking is doing on the net!

    --
    Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
  7. Re:Is he a real genius by GloomE · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe you should do some research into this and present your findings.

  8. Re:Off the shelf Linux? by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 2

    Yes!

    http://xkcd.com/619/

    --
    Summation 2
  9. Re:Off the shelf Linux? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yo dawg. I heard you like Beowulf Clusters, so I put Anglo-Saxon lore in your nutty breakfast cereal so you can kill the Grendel while you get your Guideline Daily Allowance of dietary fibre.

    amidoinitrite?

    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/