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U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#21

Post by myrandomcomment »

nullnilvoid wrote: post #19
zt wrote: post #8

This is chump change, we should have invested $2.58 billion or more. China isn't taking half measures in their state's science and technology investments. They realize we're in a second cold war, just one where the two combatants have more economic interdependence. They are making investments like the ones that helped us win the last war.

> They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then…

I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in everything they do.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#23

Post by killjoywashere »

USG has tons of compute. What we don't have is the tooling behind AWS or GCP (minus GovCloud which is mainly inaccessible due to infosec and budgetary insanity).

Our scientists look at what could be, look at their very interesting datasets, and then gnash their teeth for want of better tooling. People know this. Senior people from industry have screamed at senior government leadership that they are 20 years behind and falling faster. Nothing changes. Why?

Every time someone gets out from under their grad school payoff contract, they run to Google or Facebook.

Very few people are committing for the long term, and that's what's needed. Long-term commitment to steward a program. The people who remain often lack technical chops, have "certificates" in "cyber" something or other, but got through the Acquisitions school and now have authority to just pour money into blades, load Red Hat and mpi4py, and say "look, it's a supercomputer"!

They don't need to invest in iron. They need to invest in people. But they think they can just keep hiring new grads and expect magic.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#24

Post by outside1234 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #15
losteric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a mere 2% the cost of the USS Gerald Ford (which would probably be destroyed within 24 hours of active war with China)

I would like to see the details if your tactical analysis on that.

Nuclear weapon. I'd give it 20 minutes tops.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#25

Post by sillysaurus3 »

adventured wrote: post #20
losteric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a mere 2% the cost of the USS Gerald Ford (which would probably be destroyed within 24 hours of active war with China)

Your premise is comical. Any war that involves destroying a US carrier and killing thousands of soldiers in doing so, will move to a nuclear stand-off almost immediately thereafter. China and Russia have always understood that. For China, the ability to sink a US carrier only matters in instances of absolute war, where hundreds of millions of people will die. Being able to sink a carrier if you're a major military co…

Since we happen to be talking about sinking carriers and the possibility of nuclear war, I thought I'd mention a video that brings this scenario to life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA

It's a fictional BBC news segment covering a "serious incident" between NATO and Russian forces.

"Tensions between NATO and Russia have been growing over the past few years, and the continuing military build-up in the Baltic region is increasing concerns that a serious conflict might be a real possibility. This dramatization depicts one possible scenario. We hope that it shows how fragile our world is, and how quickly it can be changed by military and political decision-makers who do not speak for the tens of millions of people whose lives they may well destroy."

It's only tangentially related to the conversation, but it's such an excellent work of art that I can't help plugging it. The authors appear to be anonymous, which is interesting. If you were affected by the movie Threads or any other nuclear fiction, you might find this video similarly powerful.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#26

Post by Retric »

killjoywashere wrote: post #23

USG has tons of compute. What we don't have is the tooling behind AWS or GCP (minus GovCloud which is mainly inaccessible due to infosec and budgetary insanity). Our scientists look at what could be, look at their very interesting datasets, and then gnash their teeth for want of better tooling. People know this. Senior people from industry have screamed at senior government leadership that they are 20 years behind an…

AWS is a terrible match for super computing hardware. Sure, there are some embarrassingly parallel workloads that don't need fast interconnects, but mostly latency or memory becomes the issue.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#28

Post by bpodgursky »

outside1234 wrote: post #24
vonmoltke wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see the details if your tactical analysis on that.

Nuclear weapon. I'd give it 20 minutes tops.

If your tactical analysis involves nuclear weapons, there's no point in doing a tactical analysis, because most everything dies. Everyone knows this, which is why everyone is still building conventional weapons.

Why would China be working on conventional ship-to-ship missiles if they expected a nuclear war? They'd just use ICBMs / long-range missiles.

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#29

Post by enraged_camel »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #21
nullnilvoid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then…

I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in everything they do.

I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in the 1800s?

Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China

#30

Post by Retric »

vonmoltke wrote: post #15
losteric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a mere 2% the cost of the USS Gerald Ford (which would probably be destroyed within 24 hours of active war with China)

I would like to see the details if your tactical analysis on that.

The best toys are not really widely known or battle tested. However, consider people have had a long time to prepare for aircraft carriers without a direct conflict between major powers and aircraft carriers are easily tracked in real time by satellites. Further, they might as well be sitting still in terms of a high mach (AKA 10+) missiles.

PS: Remember, we where doing optical recognition for missiles twenty years ago. So, reasonably close is going to be a hit most of the time.

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