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Cray To Build Australia's Fastest Supercomputer

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

Bismillah writes: US supercomputer vendor Cray has scored the contract to build the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's new system, said to be capable of 1.6 petaFLOPS and with an upgrade option in three years' time to hit 5 petaFLOPS. From the iTnews story: "The increase in capacity will allow the BoM to deal with growth in the 1TB of data it collects every day, which it expects to increase by 30 percent every 18 months to two years. It will also allow the agency to collect new areas of information it previously lacked the capacity for. 'The new observation platforms that are coming online are bringing quite a lot more data,' supercomputer program director Tim Pugh told iTnews.

54 comments

  1. damn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Man, that shit is cray!

    1. Re:damn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't know they are still in business. Someone I know bought an old cray computer from Ebay for furniture.

    2. Re:damn by Thong · · Score: 1

      You should get out more...

  2. LINUX AGAIN!!!!! WINDOWS IS DEATH KNELL!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    $5 says it runs Linux.

    top500.org

  3. Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by Even · · Score: 0

    Inspired by and financed by NSA.

    1. Re:Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That meme is getting really old. Got anything else?

    2. Re: Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I liked it better when the joke was Chinese hardware backdoors.

    3. Re:Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by CajunArson · · Score: 0

      OMG! The NSA might figure out what the weather in Australia is by reading the weather report!

      Call Putin! I mean Snowden! We need to bust this unconstitutional weather reporting wide open!

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    4. Re:Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meme? Are you that retarded? A meme implies that the scenario is untrue, yet when it comes to the NSA installing back doors in everything we have plenty of facts to back the claim.

      Cynical, snarky, satirical, sarcastic are all fair game but not "meme".

    5. Re: Australia's Fastest Supercomputer. Hmmmmm by davester666 · · Score: 1

      haha. You like getting backdoored!

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  4. Hot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Weather in Australia: Hot, really damn hot.
    Done.
    What do they need this for?

    1. Re:Hot by Barny · · Score: 1

      Not very familiar with the country, huh?

      At the moment temps are ranging from -3C to about 5C here. In summer it gets up around the late 40s or early 50s, but otherwise, it is subject to change without notice.

      Further note, BoM is typically "Bank of Melbourne".

      --
      ...
      /me sighs
    2. Re:Hot by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "What do they need this for?"
      Small nations usually buy big computer for a few historic reasons, very advanced weapons design or a crypto race.
      Australia has given up on its own advance weapon design and fully imports its needs from the USA.
      Huge amounts of data collected in Asia for itself and the NSA/GCHQ flows into remote secure collection sites.
      That bulk flow might find its way into a dual use civilian military telco system with global suppliers and other nations been very close to internal domestic military networks.
      The only way to ensure its mil/gov networks stay secure its to try exotic new crypto it is trying to build all on its own.
      For that it needs some free dual use fancy "weather" super computer to test its home brew crypto.
      Australia also has to be able to break any encryption it find in Asia outside of the NSA and GCHQ help.
      A "weather" super computer sounds just a bit more real than one for banking, agricultural or classic one site academic use.
      ie a decades long quantum encryption boondoggle needs testing. Lots of testing, over time and the project is at the really big US computer stage.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re: Hot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Further further note, Bom is rarely used for bank of Melbourne. Especially after Westpac bought them and then shut them down (merged their customers into their own). They only in the last coupe odd years resurrected the brand name.
      If you think bom stands for bank of Melbourne before the Bom (Bom.gov.au ring a bell?) Then I can only assume you work in the financial industry.
      reference: actual Melbournian

    4. Re:Hot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And I presume you're basing this on one of your mescaline experiences, Mr Huxley?

    5. Re:Hot by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      AC a bit of reading shows Australia has some super computer ambitions and spending.
      Quantum computer work has been great for funding.
      "Quantum storage breakthrough key to 'unbreakable' encryption A new quantum hard drive jointly developed by researchers in Australia and New Zealand could lead the way to an 'unbreakable' worldwide data encryption network."(January 12, 2015)
      http://www.zdnet.com/article/q...
      "Powerful quantum computers move a step closer to reality A research team from Australia has pushed quantum computers closer to fruition, but a former NSA director warns that the technology could break encryption" (October 2014)

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  5. Used to be an obligatory post by scsirob · · Score: 1

    This would be posted when Slashdot was still news for nerds:
    "I wonder what a Beowulf cluster of these could do.."

    --
    To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
    1. Re:Used to be an obligatory post by amalcolm · · Score: 1

      It is its own Beowulf cluster !

      --
      Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
    2. Re:Used to be an obligatory post by OzPeter · · Score: 1

      This would be posted when Slashdot was still news for nerds:
      "I wonder what a Beowulf cluster of these could do.."

      Why don't you ask Natalie Portman why things have gone down hill? I'm sure you can get her comment before her breakfast of hot grits. But just be prepared for an answer that welcomes the new overlords.

      The sad thing is that Netcraft will now finally be able to confirm what is going on, to the point that not even an insensitive clod in Soviet Russia will be spared any feelings. Now if you will excuse me, I need to change the onion on my belt.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    3. Re: Used to be an obligatory post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This thread is chock full of awesome and win.

    4. Re:Used to be an obligatory post by KGIII · · Score: 1

      But can it run Crysis?

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  6. Just breaking . . . by jblues · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just breaking: Australian Prime minister Tony About-face reports that, in the interests of national security, the weather will no longer be reported, and the machinery will be turned over to the George Brandis / Australian Federal Police, where it will be used to monitor the internet (just meta-data) for unauthorized wind-mills.

    --
    If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
    1. Re:Just breaking . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is policy to not comment on on water operations. That now extends to precipitation.

  7. It'll be called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just sell them an off-the-shelf PC. They won't know the difference as long as it has anti-dingo malware detector..

    1. Re: It'll be called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it is just a bunch of Haswell Xeon clustered

  8. I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... but here in the UK our Met Office sometimes can't even get it right 12 hours in advance. I'm not blaming them for that because the point i'm making is it doesn't matter how powerful the computer, if you don't have enough data and/or the software model isn't good enough then the hardware won't make much difference especially when chaos theory is working against you all the time too.

    1. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australian weather forecasts are easy: Just report that it will be hot! Most of the time you will be right on the money.

    2. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Chaos theory is working against you insofar as a slight change to the input data might yield a large change to the output data. So, they add noise to the input data and run many simulations, to get a probability distribution over outcomes. OBVIOUSLY if you have faster hardware you can run more simulations in the same time and get a higher quality result. But the higher quality is only a better probability distribution. It still won't tell you what will *definitely* occur. That's impossible and you shouldn't be trapped into judging systems as "zero error" vs "non-zero error" because there are NO systems with non-zero error anywhere.

    3. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (I meant there are no systems with zero error, duh! :)

    4. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by DanJ_UK · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Yes but here in the UK we have the Atlantic, the gulf stream, the jet stream, warm air pushed up from the continent and cold air being pushed down from the north sea all meeting conveniently right at the UK, I'm surprised we can predict an hour ahead in the UK let alone 24 hours in advance.

      With all these dynamics converging in one place it makes sense that we're building a 16 petaflops supercomputer to replace the current one the UK met office uses.

      The new system will be housed partly at the Met Office headquarters in Exeter and partly at a new facility in the Exeter Science Park, and will reach its full capacity in 2017.

      At that point, its processing power will be 16 petaflops - meaning it can perform 16 quadrillion calculations every second .

      The "Cray XC40" machine will have 480,000 central processing units or CPUs, which is 12 times as many as the current Met Office supercomputer, made by IBM. At 140 tonnes, it will also be three times heavier.

      That kind of makes my eyes bleed / head hurt to think about.

      --
      - Dan
    5. Re: I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks Jeff.

    6. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by virens · · Score: 1

      I used to live in Australia (in Newcastle, to be specific) and I should say that Ozzie Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is pretty good at predicting weather. Some weather websites that use BoM data give slightly better results (in particular, WeatherZone) but still - very decent. WeatherZone has an app for Android, and I liked it so much that went ahead and bought a full version. Predictions for 24 hours are very accurate, and 5-day ahead are pretty decent, too.

    7. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 1

      Australian weather forecasts are easy: Just report that it will be hot! Most of the time you will be right on the money.

      Except when it's -6C (last night) or lower. Canberra, National Capital, of Australia - which is not a small island off the coast of California you geographically challenged fool.

      Try camping out overnight in the Death Valley and see how "mostly hot" that is - don't worry about a sleeping bag. Please.

    8. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get the joke. I've slept in Death Valley often, and it's quite comfortable at night (It was *never* cold, not even middle of winter).

      There are parts of ``Death Valley'' that aren't as pleasant (with snow sometimes into the summer)---high up on those mountains, etc., but that's not inside the valley.

    9. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by elgatozorbas · · Score: 1

      if you don't have enough data and/or the software model isn't good enough then the hardware won't make much difference

      Agreed. This is why they are also assing hardware to record more data. More data = bigger computer = better predictions makes sense to me.

    10. Re:I don't know about Aus weather forecasts by storkus · · Score: 1

      here in the UK our Met Office sometimes can't even get it right 12 hours in advance.

      Here in the western USA, reading the AFD's (Area Forecast Discussions), whenever model tendencies come up, the Euro and Canadian models tend to be way off, perhaps because, despite being global models, they're optimized for high northern latitudes whereas we're in the Horse latitudes. Only a guess, but it's a constant. Further south, for tropical eastern Pacific hurricanes, the results tend to be hilariously off and are dismissed by the forecasters almost immediately.

  9. Hope they remember the power bill by elmer+at+web-axis · · Score: 1

    So Melbourne uni had a great cluster. Spent a fortune on it. It's switched off because they couldn't afford the power. Let's hope the BOM remembers to factor that into the estimate. I guess we know now why they want to increase the GST.

    1. Re:Hope they remember the power bill by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 1

      So Melbourne uni had a great cluster. Spent a fortune on it. It's switched off because they couldn't afford the power. Let's hope the BOM remembers to factor that into the estimate. I guess we know now why they want to increase the GST.

      I didn't know that, thanks - if I had mod points I'd mod that up.

      I'm pretty sure the push to increase the GST is so Abbott can lower the tax rates for his coal mining mates - and to pay for more helicopter flights by politicians of all parties to fly more instead of having to drive.

    2. Re: Hope they remember the power bill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What socialist trash. What makes power expensive here in Australia?

      The carbon tax (when it was around)
      Solar panels
      Windmills
      Unionised workforces gold plating the infrastructure.

      And you blame Abbott?

    3. Re: Hope they remember the power bill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Try the gold plated return on investment guaranteed to the private power distribution companies, returns way above the cost of financing. This has led to high quantities of unnecessary infrastructure being installed and in many cases never even used. Donors to the Liberal party.

  10. So many jokes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1) Fastest supercomputer in Australia is like being the skinniest kind at fat camp.(this was my first reaction)...
    2) Is it powered by kangaroos? How many GHOPS?(I think this counts as a "pun".)
    3) Do the CPU fans spin in the opposite direction?

    1. Re:So many jokes... by Primate+Pete · · Score: 1

      3) Do the CPU fans spin in the opposite direction?

      Well done. I tip my hat to you, sir or madam or whatever it is that lurks behind AC posts.

  11. I agree with this title. by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    It probably runs on platypus blood, and I bet you have to feed the data in upside down. That shit is totally cray.

  12. But the main question is ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Is it PC compatible?

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:But the main question is ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      Back in 1984 this was imagined to be the spec for a incredible pie-in-the-sky computer:

      It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.

      Except for the screen resolution, we beat them all several times over. Voice recognition has come a long way but still way short of the bridge of USS Enterprise NCC-1701. And Popular Mechanics has been selling flying car on its cover to gullible teenagers since 1930s. Come on Mechanical Engineers. Step up to the plate and deliver something.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:But the main question is ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that resolution is silly to begin with, the human eye can only see so much. There'd be no benefit in doing so.

  13. That's a lot of data by AndyKron · · Score: 0

    It takes 1TB of data a day to record that it's hot?

    1. Re:That's a lot of data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ....in the summer.

    2. Re: That's a lot of data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10 Gb, plus 990 Gb backup in case the computer throws a wobbly.

  14. Pity by Psychotria · · Score: 2

    It seems that the more Australia's BoM relies on computer modelling the worse their predictions become. Honestly the predictions of 15-20 years ago were more accurate than the BoM has been able to produce in the last decade or so.

    1. Re: Pity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As soon as I saw the word "honestly" I knew you were lying.

    2. Re:Pity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? I've seen the opposite trend. When I was a child, I can remember being able to predict what the weather would be like for any important event (you know - birthdays, long weekends, etc) by assuming the exact opposite of the weather report. Nowadays it's rarely wrong.

      If you were in somewhere like Melbourne it might be different, though. Brisbane is a bit more stable weather-wise.

  15. Australia's getting a supercomputer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That shit Cray.

  16. It is too bad by terrywirth5 · · Score: 1

    that the Aussies couldn't do it on their own but that would divert their attention from digging even more coal mines beside the Great Barrier Reef.