DOE? that cant be right
U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#42This 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.
Honestly, faster super computers aren't going to affect the balance of power. There is a ridiculous amount of computer power available already.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#43Earlier 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.
I'd recommend these as an interesting starting point ([2] has videos):
[1] http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-military-balance-of-...
[2] http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/09/balance-of-power-in-wes...
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#44I've spent a lot of time in country X. They all want Y. Okay. That's the kind of crap that was in the 1800's, that's still in the 2010's, unfortunately. Your words sound like something from a grown up bully jealous of their victim's achievements in life.
How do you know I am not Chinese or my wife is not? Or my best friend? Or someone in my family?
I wish the best for China and the Chinese people. I hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. That however does not involve the threat to take Taiwan by force or claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs.
What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on the fact that I have spent time in the country and have read the local press, and spoken with the local people. The humiliation faced by the Chinese at the hand of the western powers is a common theme of books and movies and TV shows in China.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#45USG 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.
Dirty little secret:
Much the computing on these machines isn't supercomputing and doesn't need fast interconnects. In fact, many (most?) workloads would be best done in the cloud. Except we already bought these machines. So there's tons of frameworks around meant to use these machines like they are AWS pizza boxes. If it's inefficient due to an architectural mismatch, that's fine. You're still using the machine that was paid for, and the only numbers that matter is utilization, and those metrics aren't even defined in terms of CPU utilization. If you reserve 10 nodes, and only run on one node, it's still reported that a 10 node job ran for 6 hours, not that a 10 node job job ran at 10% efficiency for 6 hours.
As far as why the accounting is this way, it's assumed that users will attempt to maximize their usage since allocations are defined. But even then, you can blow through your allocation and generally ask for more. But that's not necessarily what happens.
In summary: Because we bought these big computers, we have to use them, even if the workload isn't a good match.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#46This 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.
Honestly, faster super computers aren't going to affect the balance of power. There is a ridiculous amount of computer power available already.
I'm not so sure about that.
Faster super computers allow you to do all kinds of things that would otherwise be quite hard. Think of supercomputers as weapons that you can fire very quietly, nobody even notices that you just tested some new (possibly nuclear) weapons system or that you designed some fighter jet, submarine or rocket.
Super computers are a game changer, not having them is as much as ceding territory, having them but not knowing how to use them has a similar effect. Just like computers were a game changer in the previous war so super computers will be a game changer in the next, with the added caveat that you might not even notice when it starts or ends other than that you suddenly find out that your counterparty runs the show because they cracked the codes you thought were safe.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#47I've spent a lot of time in country X. They all want Y. Okay. That's the kind of crap that was in the 1800's, that's still in the 2010's, unfortunately. Your words sound like something from a grown up bully jealous of their victim's achievements in life.
How do you know I am not Chinese or my wife is not? Or my best friend? Or someone in my family? I wish the best for China and the Chinese people. I hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. That however does not involve the threat to take Taiwan by force or claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs. What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on th…
Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents, and their grandparents.
I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the 1800's.
Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman empire stuff. It's part of their history.
Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan has been developing peacefully for almost 70 years since the civil war, I don't see any violence over there.
..."claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs"
Lots of governments do lots of crap, does that mean we can say the whole country and all its people want it?
And what does U.S. has anything to do with any of this stuff, anyway. Sure I understand if China was doing things in Mexico or the Caribbean, but I don't understand why they want to meddle in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and South China Sea, and then call Russia, Iran, China as agitators.
Do I think that's what the U.S. public support? Meddle in countries half way around the world? No!
And thanks for your best wishes.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You need to chill out and look at the future, not the past. If you dwell on the past, many countries have invaded many other countries. The British colonized and ruled the US for a long time. The US invaded Mexico and seized large portion of California and Texas. Even recently, the US invaded Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, among others. China was the leading power for hundreds of years, way longer than the US…
The Chinese people are not the Chinese government. When someone is speaking about what "China" wants, it is the ruling party.
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#49Why is this in the DOE budget?
This is where the US' climate change budget is going [citation needed]
Guess this now needs reconfiguring http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange
Re: U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to chill out and look at the future, not the past. If you dwell on the past, many countries have invaded many other countries. The British colonized and ruled the US for a long time. The US invaded Mexico and seized large portion of California and Texas. Even recently, the US invaded Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, among others. China was the leading power for hundreds of years, way longer than the US…
The Chinese people are not the Chinese government. When someone is speaking about what "China" wants, it is the ruling party.
"I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s."
"What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on the fact that I have spent time in the country and have read the local press, and spoken with the local people. The humiliation faced by the Chinese at the hand of the western powers is a common theme of books and movies and TV shows in China."
Not this someone.