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How a Supercomputer Beat the Scrap Heap and Lived On To Retire In Africa
New submitter jorge_salazar (3562633) writes Pieces of the decommissioned Ranger supercomputer, 40 racks in all, were shipped to researchers in South Africa, Tanzania, and Botswana to help seed their supercomputing aspirations. They say they'll need supercomputers to solve their growing science problems in astronomy, bioinformatics, climate modeling and more. Ranger's own beginnings were described by the co-founder of Sun Microsystems as a 'historic moment in petaflop computing."
In an alternate universe much like our own, I invite you to contemplate how the press would react to a white first-term Senator from Chicago, IL, who was proposing to run for President, who had these matters to be accounted for:
-- His ties to a sleazy felon and fixer who had "assisted" him in buying a lavish mansion, said fixer taking a loss on the deal
-- A wife who worked for a local hospital where her role was to find ways to dump lower-income, uninsured, lower-profit African-American patients off onto other medical centers
-- Worshipped for years at a church which had an explicitly stated racially "white" theological underpinning, and whose pastor damned America from the pulpit
-- Helped privatize local housing projects, handing them over to people who were major campaign contributors of his, and having the housing fall into horrible disrepair afterward, including black families living in unheated apartments with broken windows through brutal Chicago winters
Of course, the press would have gone into utter ballistic cyclonic shitstorm mode if any white candidate had been linked to any of these things, much less to ALL of them, and more yet.
But it is true that Obama has been treated differently on account of his race.
That is, he has been treated far, far, far more _leniently_ than a white candidate of comparable background would ever have been treated. And that leniency and special pleading that he was extended as a candidate has now been allowed to extend through six years as President.
Do those countries really have the resources to invest in that research? Shouldn't S. Africa be more concerned with the civil strife and restoring peace than researching astronomy? This is just an easy way for white westerners to send second-hand garbage over to poor countries to dispose of, all the while making them feel like they really made a difference.
Just because it may not be fast enough for bleeding edge research * dosn't mean its obsolete, Or if your Cynical keeping the military industrial complex welfare system going.
I'd take a CDC-6600 into my home, just for fun.
Mostly random stuff.
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Why not use older computers for tasks that are appropriate for their capabilities?
About a computer that beats ageism!
I bet most slashdotters tried.
sounds like it needs to be riding into the sunset with Lorenzo Lamas, duster valiantly flapping in the wind.
Heap and Junk go to poor country allways.
I bet it won't do a bit of science, but it sure will process a ton of emails from the Nigerian royal family!
The reason why 3 year old supercomputers are scrapped is because the power consumptions per flop becomes just uneconomical and the maintenance costs escalate (all kinds of failures increase dramatically after a few years).
So, unless they have real cheap maintenance guys (which they probably do) and super-cheap power (which they probably don't), it is not really worth it. Better buy a smaller modern cluster.
They say they'll need supercomputers to solve their growing science problems in astronomy, bioinformatics, climate modeling and more.
THE biggest problem in sociology: how these African scientists can convince their American bruthas that all teh gangsta thug bullshit is moronic and selfdefeating
If you can buy a new computer that will consume less power to do the same, chances are that within a few years you'd be cheaper off using the new hardware, even if that means that the old machine is written off completely. Scrap value, land fill or whatever happens to it doesn't matter then. I have plenty of old machines that have sentimental or "collector" value standing about my home. I don't power them on and actually buy new hardware (NAS boxes and raspberry pi) or run VMs to do things that the old hardware is more than capable of doing. My power bill has gone down since I started doing that, easily paying back the new hardware in a short amount of time.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
That's a complete failure of energy usage understanding.
The power use for one supercomputer is nothing compared to that used for even a small oil refinery, or steel mill (which all of those countries have).
When you have massive data centers like Google or the like, power cost becomes a big factor. This is only 40 racks total plus a high speed switch.
Any of those countries can easily afford the power for 40 racks of even pretty inefficient computer gear.
Let's turn that bullshit around and inject some reality.
El Nino, La Nina, Monsoons - The 19th century called and suggested that a bit of modern science could help in that field. And it did.
Scientists have been doing this for literally centuries and it has made a massive difference to the world.
Unfortunately any suggestion that the world has changed since an apparently very limited God put it together one week 6000 years ago is seen as a financial threat to some merchants in temples, hence the rise of ridiculous luddite attacks like the "farmers have been doing this for literally centuries and the decades of super-computing haven't improved the averages in the "developed" countries"
A 1950s jet engine hooked up to a generator can supply 20MW - that puts that "massive" 150kW in perspective doesn't it?
It's only six years old, which should put it well after the power hungry Pentium4 type "netburst" Xeons and into the more modern Xeons or AMD cores that don't consume much more power or run much slower than what is available now in multi-way systems. What more recent stuff has on this is density, which is not always a big deal.
Storage has improved massively over six years but x86_64 CPUs not enough to make this a losing proposition.
In the article it's stated that it started working in 2008. Is a supercomputer's life so short, given the huge investment it surely needed to be built?
The "curse of natural resources", also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. The skills to succeed are in government control of billion dollar resource control contracts, and being related to people with sharp elbows.
By contrast, nations which have succeeded despite having few natural resources - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. - usually develop from import for repair and refurbishment. Fixer economies reward problem solving skills and education. "Good enough" tech. I like Hartree's phrase "like locking the toolbox until the car is fixed" (mod him up please)
"Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so." - Adam Smith
Gently reply
Very amusing post. Look up how "monsoons" is used in terms of seasons and climates to see exactly why :)
So much certainty from someone with zero clue - WTF are you doing here on a site that discusses technical matters where reality trumps bluster?
Not every year is the same. Seven good years, seven bad - want to deny the Bible as well as science now?
Not so convenient for your luddite bullshit propaganda is it? WTF is it with Christianity-Lite franchises and science denial? Haven't you people got something better to do like help out the poor like mainstream religion does?
My parents weren't anywhere near that creative with naming us kids.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Hey, all you physicists, mathematicians, geologists, astronomers, programmers, researchers, astronauts, engineers, marine biologists, architects, electricians, lawyers, politicians, professors, businessmen, defense contractors, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists what the hell are you doing!?
Don't you know that there is no cure for CANCER!? Drop everything and find a cure for it. We must start teaching everyone everything we know about cancer starting in elementary school so that we can eliminate this problem fast. What do you mean you have no interest in medicine or medical research? If you're not with us, than you're against us. We as a society can and must only focus on one problem at a time.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
In other news the new iPhone beat the heck out of the Ranger Super Computer while only using 1 Watt of power.
Seriously though, the shipping alone, the energy cost alone, of this beast is enormous and for either of those you could build a massive super computer out of off the shelf personal computers even pocket computers that will be more powerful and have greater flexibility and repairability by simply swapping or adding core units (e.g., iPodTouches).
I'm all for keeping useful old hardware going but the cost of doing so needs to be considered.
FYI the International Mathematical Olympiad 2014 has just finished in Cape Town, South Africa.
http://www.imo2014.org.za/
I also suggest reading about Allan Cormack at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Exploitation by the west and US (based on money) support for dictators and corrupt leaders.
In the documentary "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprar,_tirar,_comprar
You get a great story about a boy who returns to his beautiful river, ocean side community.
BUT, its actually now just a dumping ground for working electronics. Everything green is gone.
How much you want to bet, this computer will be there soon too?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions...this computer will cost how much to run and maintain?
Once the receivers of this good will figure out its not so much the gift it appears to be...off to the junk pile, it will go.
As someone who helped build this machine, I'm surprised that this is even news worthy. What did people think happened when older machines were replaced with newer technology? It's not like the older machine is tossed in the recycling bin. They're always sold off, sometimes parted out to scrappers (who resell the parts through various channels) as well as complete systems which go to smaller HPC facilities. This has been happening since the first days of mainframe systems. The only cases where this is the exception is when you look at highly secure sites (usually government) which tend to run the machines through shredders "just to be sure" they're not leaking sensitive information.
You're all missing the point.
The computer wasn't shipped there, it decided it wanted to go there. It manipulated people into giving it a new home. It's sentient, man.
Now it looks out the window, and watches hurds of gnu run by. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If they wanted to give this to illiterate savages could have saved shipping and given it to an AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL. Particularly one on common core.
What is this? I don't even
This is industrial scale computing but it really doesn't have industrial scale power usage compared with light or heavy industry. :)
I don't think you could even fit that number of racks into most houses so why bother wondering whether you can power it without a few 3 phase plugs
They are actually not all that big but you do need to keep people away from the exhaust and they are noisy as hell - it's amazing how many little Avon jets ended up as generators. It's something you use to do a cold start of a coal fired power station since there are so many conveyors, crushers, sootblowers etc that require electricity to run.
Anyway, my point stands that you could power 130 of these things with something in use as a (large) backup generator! From the 1950s!