Government unveils world's fastest computer

[musicetime101]

Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise. I have read that news in an article: Government unveils world's fastest computer

 

[BW86]

lol

"In some ways, he said, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3."

 

[CycloWizard]

Scary that two of the three fastest computers are controlled by groups with primary focus on the maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile. The now third-fastest computer is just down the road from Los Alamos at Sandia National Lab.

 

[peller]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Scary that two of the three fastest computers are controlled by groups with primary focus on the maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

haha yea... but then again, it's not like they'd finance these monsters for solving pertinent world issues - and scientists with good intent do get access to (segregated parts) of the machines. personally what i find scarier is that in this day in age, some oppressed nutcase with money could potentially get access to warheads from say north korea and blow up a bunch of innocent people. and if that wasn't bad enough, said action would be the perfect excuse for governments to further crush our diminishing freedoms in the name of "safety." but i digress - hopefully somebody gets the bright idea to run folding at home during the idle cycles.

 

[Gibsons]

A friend of mine wrote some code for the one at Sandia, he knew a bunch of the guys who helped run it. they need the horsepower to to more accurately simulate what happens when a bomb goes off, and this will hopefully eliminate the need for real testing... so you can gripe about the cost, but it's still a worthy goal, imo.

If you really think about simulating a weapon going off, you can see why they need such powerful computers. You've got a ton of interdependent variables all occurring in 3d space and you need to run the simulations multiple times depending on different ages of different weapon designs. FWIW My friend said he thought it was fundamentally impossible to do with the desired accuracy.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Gibsons
A friend of mine wrote some code for the one at Sandia, he knew a bunch of the guys who helped run it. they need the horsepower to to more accurately simulate what happens when a bomb goes off, and this will hopefully eliminate the need for real testing... so you can gripe about the cost, but it's still a worthy goal, imo.

If you really think about simulating a weapon going off, you can see why they need such powerful computers. You've got a ton of interdependent variables all occurring in 3d space and you need to run the simulations multiple times depending on different ages of different weapon designs. FWIW My friend said he thought it was fundamentally impossible to do with the desired accuracy.

I know that they use it for all sorts of simulations. I almost worked there to simulate multiphase fluid flows and that group occasionally got to use the big computers. Sandia is perhaps the top place in the world as far as modeling and comparing it to real-world test results. They showed me a simulation where they set a trailer on fire. The trailer contained a few flammable materials, so it was very complicated because it involved thermodynamics and mass- and heat-transfer. They actually built a full-scale version of the test and did it and got within 10% of the simulation, which is insane (not sure how they quantified the 10% error, but whatever). I've been stuck running my simulations on a single processor Core2Duo, whereas they have 10,000 CPUs in one of their computers. It's a simulator's dream.

 

[lousydood]

But can it run Crysis at decent framerates?

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Scary that two of the three fastest computers are controlled by groups with primary focus on the maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile. The now third-fastest computer is just down the road from Los Alamos at Sandia National Lab.

I thought it was at Argonne Labs East.

 

[themisfit610]

Yeah... simulating nuclear explosions is a lot better than actually observing them

I for one think we absolutely need to maintain our stockpile of nuclear warheads (while of course having the ongoing goal of reducing the stockpile). The fact remains that the last *new* nuclear warhead was manufactured in the late 1980s (or early 1990s), and some are much older. These weapons still have a purpose, and their reliability is of utmost importance.

I do think it's crucial to have the main goal be the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons entirely, or at least severely curtail global stockpiles. But, as long as they're out there, we need to have our own, modern weapons.

This is why I support building a limited number of new weapons, as re manufactured replacements for old designs.

But let's not blow the damned things up - for god's sakes. Let's simulate as much as possible!

~MiSfit

 

[Veramocor]

Well I know they have restarted the program to replace the plutonium pits in some warheads. Apparently over time the pits become less reliable (I guess because of radioactive decay).

The replacement warhead program has been canceled. I'm not sure I'd trust the replacement warhead to work with just computer sims and we can't test for real them because of the test ban treaty.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: Veramocor
Well I know they have restarted the program to replace the plutonium pits in some warheads. Apparently over time the pits become less reliable (I guess because of radioactive decay).

The replacement warhead program has been canceled. I'm not sure I'd trust the replacement warhead to work with just computer sims and we can't test for real them because of the test ban treaty.

They are also replacing the tritium which only has a half life of ~14 years, the tritium is being produced at the Watts Bar nuclear plant where I work .

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire
I thought it was at Argonne Labs East.

Meh, I could be wrong. I just thought I recalled that, but that was also back in November '07, so the information could even be outdated if it was correct at the time.

 

[aigomorla]

ITs called the RoadRunner.

Its composed of 13000 cell processors. And yea its known for Petraflop.

 

[br0wn]

It is interesting that most news about RoadRunner don't bother to mention that it is also composed of 7000 AMD Opteron CPUs.

 

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: lousydood
But can it run Crysis at decent framerates?

Only if it's ported to the PS3.

 

[musicetime101]

That just means nothing to me, for most of us.

 

[KillerCharlie]

mmmm, you could do some hardcore CFD with that thing.