US Intel Agencies To Build Superconducting Computer

dcblogs writes "The Director of National Intelligence is soliciting help to develop a superconducting computer. The goal of the government's solicitation is 'to demonstrate a small-scale computer based on superconducting logic and cryogenic memory that is energy efficient, scalable, and able to solve interesting problems.' The NSA, in particular, has had a long interest in superconducting technology, but 'significant technical obstacles prevented exploration of superconducting computing,' the government said in its solicitation. Those innovations include cryogenic memory designs that allow operation of memory and logic in close proximity within the cold environment, as well as much faster switching speeds. U.S. intelligence agencies don't disclose the size of their systems, but the NSA is building a data center in Utah with a 65 MW power supply."

Comments

MW

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I take it the phrase "relays clacked" is no longer useful in science fiction stories?

Red Riding Hood Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why Big Brother, what big eyes you have!"

"All the better to see you with, my dear."

US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys

[Thaelon]

They violated the bill of rights with their toys. They should be taken away, and the children who did it punished.

Re:US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys

[Thaelon]

The founding fathers intended that the freedoms assigned by the Bill of Rights not be superseded by technology, bureaucracy, plutarchy, or dictatorship.

Re:US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys

[icebike]

The founding fathers never intended the bill of rights to apply to the internet.

Actually, the founding fathers never intended the bill of rights PERIOD.

So many ordinary citizens saw the dangers of authoritarian government that some colonies refused to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added.

The first Bill of Rights was proposed during the convention but was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations after only a brief discussion. Madison, then an opponent of a Bill of Rights, later explained the vote by calling the state bills of rights "parchment barriers" that offered only an illusion of protection against tyranny. (More prophetic words were seldom spoken.) Madison only later became in favor of the BOR.

It wasn't till 11 states had ratified the Constitution and the first congress met that the Bill of Rights was actually added, after a bitter and protracted debate. The first 12 amendments were submitted to the states for ratification in 1789 (only 10 passed). Only after this did the holdout colonies decide to become part of the United States.

Link?

[wjcofkc]

Ok, so I am extremely ill to the point I am dizzy and can barely read the summary. Am I so out of it that I am not seeing the link to the original article? Or did someone forget to add one yet it still made it to the front page?

what a joke

[Gravis Zero]

it's amazing that we cant seem to fund a universal healthcare system that would help sick people but we magically have all the money in the world to spy on said sick people.

Re:what a joke

[interkin3tic]

I've heard that countries with a more homogenous demographic spend more on social welfare programs, while citizens in countries with diversity are more stingy with what they want their taxes spent on. And of course the spy programs are supposed to defend us against non-european foreigners.

It's us vs them in the minds of many voters. "You don't look like me, so you must be bad in some way. You're out to bomb me or you want a check from the government to spend on drugs. Either way, I want my tax dollars to protect me from you, not help you."

To me, that's the most depressing thing about American politics, and the only way I can think it will change is to wait until most of the current citizens die out and hope subsequent generations are smarter than that.

Re:what a joke

[WindBourne]

Who said that they are not one and the same?
We need ppl to be well so that they can fight, work, etc. WWI was stopped early due to the massive disease issues (esp. flu) and the inability of the nations to have sustained war. However, other wars have been started over resources and perceptions of being able to take on some other nation.
Doing a minimal national health care such as O'care is not all that horrible, esp. since it actually is CHEAPER to us than what we had.
Incidentally, that is also why top generals in the military back taking actions on AGW. They would rather not have to go to war in the future. Yet, it is so odd that so many neo-con types want to allow AGW to continue and do not care about future wars. I guess that is because so many of them have never been to war.

Can superconductors compute?

[timeOday]

I am about to ask a very naiive question so please bear with me. Interconnects aside, is an ideal transistor permitted by theory? That is, 0 resistance when closed and "infinite" resistance when open? (Surely not the latter, since arcing could occur even in a vacuum). And while we're at it, it should not require any current to hold the transistor open or shut once it is switched. And should be infinitely fast :)

There must be a divide by 0 in there somewhere, it just doesn't seem like the universe would permit computation without creating some entropy.

Re:Can superconductors compute?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need infinite resistance insulators if there is a path with 0 resistance (as long as its not saturated). Also, there are way better insulators than vacuum.

However there always will be some losses: if you want to represent a bit, it must require some switching energy, or it will thermally get switched. This is where the massive gain from being very cold comes from: you can have way lower energy bit representations.

There is also always some capacitance, and connecting a low bit to a high bit is much like connecting capacitors together: you lose half the energy no matter how low the resistance is (assuming one is charged and the other is not, and they have equal capacitance, you get half the voltage across double the capacitance, and due to the V^2 term, half the energy).

So, you can't do an ideal job with transistors because changing bits the way they do consumes energy. But, it seems likely that if you managed to make super conducting transistors at very low temperatures, you might be able to drastically reduce the losses and / or run much faster. That is what they are aiming for.

You might even be able to use smaller transistors to have more computer per area, since the bits need to store less total charge with the lower thermal noise. If you throw in error correction to deal with the occasional cosmic ray or other random effects, you might be able to push the size of the stored charge way down from current approaches.

Re:Can superconductors compute?

[MindStalker]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/superconductor-logic-goes-lowpower

It appears that "logic" is done through wave form cancellation.

You have a waveform, if you pass through the same point an inverse waveform you cancel out the waveforms and end up with a 0, or a matches wave form will amplify the signal giving you a 1. Though, no, I don't fully understand how this is used for computation, it doesn't appear that they know either.

Re:Can superconductors compute?

[bertok]

They're probably using Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ), which isn't really a "quantum" computer logic, but is very fast and very low power.

It's the latter property that is of interest for making supercomputers. One of the biggest performance limitations is latency, which is caused by the speed of light delay between processors. Moving processors closer reduces the delay, but increases the specific power until there is just no practical way to cool the computer and it overheats.

Superconducting logics like RSFQ have very VERY lower power requirements, which means that you can pack the processing elements very close. It's likely that they can even be stacked, along with memory. In theory, it would be possible the squeeze a petaflop supercomputer into the space inside an average sized cryogenic Dewar!

In practice, manufacturing complex RFSQ chips has been a bit tricky. Simple ones however are used relatively often, for example as an analog to digital converter in radio telescopes and some very high-end radar systems.

There have been suggestions to miniaturize this stuff using tiny cryocoolers based on stacked Peltier elements and good insulation, but I think the temperatures required are just too low.

At the end of the day, the NSA or their ilk funding research into this stuff might be a good thing! It sounds to me like this is a great technology that just needs a few billion dollars of research funding to become practical for commercial use.

I'll just assume that

[aaaaaaargh!]

... anything with "NSA" in its name that comes from the US government consists of half-truths, lies and deliberate disinformation.

Re:lol seriously ?

[ebno-10db]

>> the NSA is building a data center in Utah with a 65 MW power supply.

Why don't you just go ahead and tell everyone the LAT/LON coordinates too while you're at it...

40.43153 N, 111.933092 W (WGS84)