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US DOE Sets Sights On 300 Petaflop Supercomputer
dcblogs writes U.S. officials Friday announced plans to spend $325 million on two new supercomputers, one of which may eventually be built to support speeds of up to 300 petaflops. The U.S. Department of Energy, the major funder of supercomputers used for scientific research, wants to have the two systems – each with a base speed of 150 petaflops – possibly running by 2017. Going beyond the base speed to reach 300 petaflops will take additional government approvals. If the world stands still, the U.S. may conceivably regain the lead in supercomputing speed from China with these new systems. How adequate this planned investment will look three years from now is a question. Lawmakers weren't reading from the same script as U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz when it came to assessing the U.S.'s place in the supercomputing world. Moniz said the awards "will ensure the United States retains global leadership in supercomputing." But Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) put U.S. leadership in the past tense. "Supercomputing is one of those things that we can step up and lead the world again," he said.
There are plenty of things that can use all the computing power you can throw at it these days. As you mentioned, weather forecasting - though more generally, climate science. Somebody from one of the National Labs mentioned at a college recruiting event that they use their supercomputer for (among other things) making sure that our aging nukes don't explode while just sitting in storage. There are thousands of applications, from particle physics to molecular dynamics to protein folding to drug discovery... Almost any branch of science you can find has some problem that a supercomputer can help solve.
Additionally, it's worth noting that these generally aren't monolithic systems; they can be split into different chunks. One project might need the whole machine to do its computations, but the next job to run after it might only need a quarter - and so four different projects can use the one supercomputer at once. It's not like the smaller computing problems end up wasting the huge size of the supercomputer. After all, many of these installations spend more in electricity bills over the 3- or 5-year lifetime of the computer than they do to install the computer in the first place, so they need to use it efficiently, 24/7.
There are countless problems solved only as a result of supercomputers. Setting aside for a minute the minority of problems that are classified (e.g. nuclear stockpile stewardship, etc), supercomputers benefit both academia and industry alike. You'll be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 company that doesn't have at least one if not multiple supercomputers in house.
For example, here is a list of case studies of specific manufacturing problems that have been solved http://www.compete.org/publica... which include things as mundane as shipping pallets, golf clubs, and washing machines.
The organization I work for, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, annually publishes a research report listing primarily academic projects that benefit from our supercomputers: https://www.osc.edu/sites/osc.... which range from Periodontal Disease, Photovoltaic Cells, Forest Management and Welding.
TL;DR: "HPC Matters" in many ways. Here's some short blinky flashy videos: http://www.youtube.com/channel...