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Obama's New Executive Order Says the US Must Build an Exascale Supercomputer
Jason Koebler writes: President Obama has signed an executive order authorizing a new supercomputing research initiative with the goal of creating the fastest supercomputers ever devised. The National Strategic Computing Initiative, or NSCI, will attempt to build the first ever exascale computer, 30 times faster than today's fastest supercomputer. Motherboard reports: "The initiative will primarily be a partnership between the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and National Science Foundation, which will be designing supercomputers primarily for use by NASA, the FBI, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Homeland Security, and NOAA. Each of those agencies will be allowed to provide input during the early stages of the development of these new computers."
But can it run Crysis?
God spoke to me
What would the existence of an exascale supercomputer mean for today's popular encryption/hashing algorithms?
Obama does something nice for science, how nice. He is still a dictator. Never forget that.
Awesome!
Does this signal the start of quantum computing?
Having to collect input from committees made up of the simpletons that reside within the halls of the FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, reminds me, in a bad way, of Robocop 2, when the stupid bitch thinks it's a good idea to allow any of the politicians input into his "new" directives to control how he acts and functions.
Now, take that to the umpteenth power with even more galactically stupid politicians and alphabet agency boot lickers, and what we'll end up with is the most powerfull computer in the world that does absolutely nothing because it's stuck in a loop trying to solve the "I always lie! I am lying to you!", until it melts down into a molten pool of metal, taking out 3/4ths of the nations power infrastructure at the same time.
... NSA data center and stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Will it blend?
Big and better nuclear weapons.
"The term "petaflop" refers to the ability to perform one quadrillion arithmetic operations per second.
The term "exascale computing system" refers to a system operating at one thousand petaflops."
Where's the Linux?
Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux
IEEE Spectrum had an article last year describing some of the challenges we'll need to overcome in order to achieve exascale computing.
Here's another, somewhat pessimistic piece they posted in 2008 - a digest of a DARPA report that went into significant technical detail.
The biggest hurdle is power, and the biggest driver of that isn't the actual computation (i.e., the energy to perform some number of FLOPS), but rather moving that data around (between cores, to/from RAM, across a PCB, and among servers). Other hurdles include how to manage so many cores, ensure they are working (nearly) concurrently, how to handle hardware failures (which will be frequent given the amount of hardware), and writing software that can even make use of such technology in anything approaching optimal fashion.
Not to say its impossible, merely hard given the present state of things and projecting a bit into the future. But as we know, "it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." [source?]
Gee, why doesn't he cut to the chase and implement every single "social justice" objective via executive order? Why doesn't he issue an XO saying that everyone above the age of 18 receive a cell phone and a free electric car? Hell, constitutional law is a joke at this point. Why doesn't he issue an XO declaring himself emperor?
For most specific problems thrown at supercomputers, you can go 30 times faster with a custom hardware architecture baked into silicon
To go 30 times fast for general purpose supercomputing, you use the latest silicon (2X) and more chips (15X) and come up with a super new interconnect to make it not suck. This would involve making some chips that support low latency IPC in hardware.
They are free to send me a few billion dollars, I'll get right on it and deliver a 30X faster machine and I'l even use some blue LEDs on the front panel.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
[doge] so much intercepts [/doge]
Exactly.
My first thought was the new addition will be tasked by the NSA/FiveEyes to break encryption for intercepted communications.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Mind you, think of the movies it could do in a bazillionK resolution.
How long would it last against that?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Pass.
Meanwhile folks with actual problems to solve and cost / benefit tradeoffs to make will be signing up for cloud services, and just paying on demand when they need a large compute run.
I know I know, this solves unique problems. But having seen the inside of govt computing, the actual utilization these systems by folks like the FBI is often very limited (they often don't have the trained staff or actual program need for these items). The amount of power burnt / $ wasted is super high.
Heaven forbid they develop usable / taxpayer facing egov systems :)
new supercomputer for the NSA to use to snoop on everyone
It seems Obama was waiting for Windows 10 to give that order since no other OS can handle this.
Exactly.
My first thought was the new addition will be tasked by the NSA/FiveEyes to break encryption for intercepted communications.
Why are you assuming they don't already have one doing that, and this is just a public version?
There is a lot of highly secured government data infrastructure out there that I hear about even though not inquiring. The cable in Virginia that gets cut by a backhoe accidentally and guys in a black van show up ten minutes later. The contract for a government data center inside a faraday cage. The government likely already has much more computing power available than we know about.
So can someone tell me, is better or worse than than banning stem cell research?
640 petaflops ought to be enough for anybody.
640 petaflopa ought to be enough for anybody.
See, you need a lot of compute power to train the neural networks used by future weapons and siphoning money out of the markets... (catching up to wall street)
Who in their right minds would let these people near a computer? Please. Let them go back to what they excel at: stealing cameras out of our luggage and groping underage genitalia.
Those issues will be resolved by a side effect of this being a government order. According to the GAO, on average it takes 4 1/2 years from the time the government orders a computer until it's installed. Right now, multiple government agencies have been told to start thinking about a plan. In two years (2017), each agency will have their plan and they'll start working to to resolve the differences between agencies. In another year (2018), they'll put out some RFPs. Those will go through the federal procurement process and the order will be placed about two years later (2020). That's when the 4 1/2 year average clock starts, so expect installation around first quarter 2025.
The goal is that it should be 30 times faster than TODAY'S computers.
And be operational in ten years. They can pretty much just order a Nexus 47, or an HP Proliant gen 12.
And after they build it, are they going to ask it the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
You know the rest.
I hope.
Really build a supercomputer for what amounts to bragging right? No roads to fix?
John Connor: "By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human race was almost destroyed by the weapons they'd built to protect themselves. I should have realized it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day, it was merely to survive it, together. The Terminator knew; he tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know; all I know is what the Terminator taught me; never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun."
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Hm, something like this needs a good, catchy name, that also makes for a good acronym.
How about...
Strategic
Kinetic
Yankee
Neural
Exaflop
Terminal
more Republican corporate welfare down our throats. All this is about is taking tax money from us at gun point to give to corporations. To give to them.
beowulf cluster of these...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I guess Obama's miffed he missed out on the early days of cheap bitcoin mining.
Even thought they have no idea of what on earth an exascale computer is.
Probably has something to do with healthcare or activist judges..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Mine Bit Coins
Synthesize the unicorn genome, to provide fuel for transportation and buy the votes of little girls.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Because that's how you get Skynet.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Let me get this straight. The President had ordered three federal government departments to make computers for several other federal government departments, and bypassed congress entirely in the process. Do I have that about right?
Nobama should take his fucking executive orders and stick them all up his ass.
... doesn't that sound like Skynet Alpha?
And who will pay for this? What was "HIS" justification for this? or is he being told by someone to do this as all good monkeys do?
Fuck you Obama. Go back to what you know best, stealing from Americans.
Today is the day that Skynet managed to get a machine from the future back to, in order to get itself created.
He can attempt to mandate all he wants. Congress approves the budgets. And since we all know how well Obama has been submitting his budgets....
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Given that even numbers suck, I am sure they will be skipping odd numbers from now on.
I'll stick with Win 7
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of pork
Table-ized A.I.
Proliant gen 12 is only 2018. :)
that's why hillary wants 500 million solar panels
The first thought I had was that I hope they don't do it because it'll only be used to invade our privacy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Buried in some farm bill, there will be a requirement to port systemd to this.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Each of those agencies will be allowed to provide input during the early stages of the development of these new computers."
Isn't that how we got the $388 Billion broke-dick F-35 Joint Strike Fighter?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seriously, building the computer is worthless, unless it comes 100% from America, or at least the west.
If the parts come from China, then it will make it trivial for China to simply build their own CPLA computer for weapons modeling.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh please...we all know that this is going to be used to spy on us. Why are we cheering?
These Peta/Exascale supercomputers are build for computer simulations (climate change, nuclear weapons stewardship, computational drug design, etc.), not for breaking encryption. That's also one reason no one is using them to mine Bitcoins: they're just not efficient at that job. To compute lots of hashes, dedicated hardware designs (read: ASICS) far outpace "general purpose" supercomputers.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
So, what you describe is essentially the difference between capacity and capability machines. The national labs have both, as there are use cases for both. But the flagship machines, e.g. Titan at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), are always capability machines -- built to run full system jobs, jobs that scale tens of or hundreds of thousands of nodes.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Basically, the procurement process for supercomputers is like this: the buyer (e.g. a DOE lab) will ready a portfolio of apps (mostly simulation codes) with a specified target performance. Vendors then bid for how "little" money they'll be able to meet that target performance. And of course the vendors will use the most (cost/power) efficient hardware they can get.
The reason why we're no longer seeing custom built CPUs in the supercomputing arena, but rather COTS chips or just slightly modified versions, is that chip design has become so exceedingly expensive and that the supercomputer market is marginalized by today's mainstream market.
Also, the simulation codes running on these machines generally far outlive most supercomputers. The stereotypical supercomputer simulation code is a Fortran program written 20 years ago, which received constant maintenance in the past years, but no serious rewrite is viable (costs exceed price of hardware). So vendors will look for low-effort ways of tuning these codes for their proposed designs. Sticking with general purpose CPUs is in most cases the most cost efficient way.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Our government can't design computers. They fuck up everything they put their hands on.
Why not just work with a computer company instead?
The GOP under Boehner and McConnell are complete flunky lapdogs for Obama. They have fully funded Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, his illegal alien coddling, and so-on and they have given him every debt ceiling increase he has demanded. These idiots even went to war against their own conservative base to give Obama a victory on his massive trade deal, add ExIm bank renewal to the highway bill he wants (which they will also ram-through over the objections of their own base voters.)
Just how many GOP bills have been vetoed by Obama???? Can you even name one?
The GOP politicians in Washington are DESPISED by their own base voters precisely because they campaigned ona promise to stop Obama but have instead been helping him and thumbing their noses at those voters. Just watch. This fall some Republicans will loudly complain about Obama and the budget and the debt...... but most will do nothing to actually oppose him and the very few who try (probably Ted Cruz and Mike Lee) will be attacked loudly by their own fellow Republicans before they, yet again, cave-in and give Obama everything. There is simply no way to honestly argue that the current GOP leadership in congress are blocking Obama at all; they have the power to since they have control of the nation's wallet, but they will not use the power. Most of them have fewer balls than "Cait" Jenner (who still has both of his)
Will be cracked, Executive Order No. 1.
It is so appropriate that this decision was published in the days preceeding the 70th anniversary of the atomic bomb attacks on the japanese christian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The japanese finally can have their revenge.
You see, Japan tried to build a "5th generation" computer future in the 1980s, with new programming languages and new chips based on new methods and materials, for never seen before extreme high performance and parallelization. They were aiming to achive full AI with all that performance leap. But that national project failed miserably and its huge costs and the humiliation brought the whole Japan into two decades of massive recession.
Now the same can happen to America! Obama wants to build a semiconductor Yahweh, an exascale computer, 30 times faster than today's fastest, hoping it will USA is the other chosen nation and give guidance on how to build the Thid Temple, for protestant zionism's greater glory. But of course they will end up with an exascale cretin and that will bring on the world's policeman's demise.
"let's put a man on the moon" was at least a sensible, clear, audacious goal.
"let's build a 30x faster computer" is not. it's easy to build a machine that is 30x faster than anything else, if you know what you're building for. GPUs are easily 30x faster than CPUs, yet that doesn't seem to be what Obama wants.
So, 30x in terms of what, processing the data collected by the NSA? Transmitting data across continents? Encrypting and decrypting data?
Anyone?
...welcome the edicts of our imperial socialist overlord!
While I'm loathe to suggest ever more government largesse rather than design separate super-computers for each organization that needs one, wouldn't it be better to support a single-point source for super-computing time, and each individual agency purchases/reserves/leases time on the system? Typically in the commercial world, such combinations of resources offer savings and efficiencies. Typically. In the Private Sector.
Forget I said anything, carry-on.
It's really for the IRS.
I see people speculating above about the government using this to break crypto, but that's really not a huge concern. If people use good keys that require brute force searching, even the smallest AES key size would take over a billion millenia to break at 10^18 ops/second (even assuming you could test a key on one "op"). And for people who use bad keys, you don't need exascale computing to break them.
So what could the FBI use something like this for? What about analysis of massive public and not-so-public data, like data mining Internet postings, email/phone records, ... Better not post something with the wrong combination of words, or someone might come knocking on your door.
They are going to spend billions of dollars just so they can crack iPhone encryption and read my grocery list. Sad. All they really need is to have a proper warrant and ask.
hihi, the fbi - I dont think they will use the computer - for detecting crimes or the corresponding crimnals who have committed crimes. Noooo - they will use it to predict WHO is going to do the crime :-)) That is, which one of you (I'm a bot so dont count me in) :) Good luck in AMERICA
People got all interested in the NSA utah facility. I fount it interesting that they expect to be able to process a YB of data a year. This is not storing, just processing. Who else publicly needs to do that? NIH. You want to store that much? That is like filling the space shuttle assembly building with SD cards. Accessing the data might be expensive.
Flops are not bytes but you see we have bottlenecks and if it is not here than its there.
They can use the new cheapo SPARC chip from Oracle to build this sucker!
How fast will it factor large prime numbers?
217 comments as of 15:48 UTC, and nobody's made any HHGTTG 'Deep thought' references yet...