Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer • Hacker News Board

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#41

Post by dekhn » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #32

azaras wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it simulate? Thanks.

Argonne National Labs, which is 5th fastest I think, is used for weather models, material science, and more[1] [1] http://www.alcf.anl.gov/

There are dual-use systems which run classified and non-classified codes (they can be partitioned.. They typically live at LANL or LLNL rather than ANL or Berkeley (Berkeley in particlar doesn't do any classified work). Note that most classified codes are actually physics/material/explosion/plasma physics simulations and you can't always tell they are running on your system.

I checked the list of projects running on ALCF and I see some pretty obvious nuclear weapon stockpile stewardship and weapon design projects, such as "Validation Simulations of Macroscopic Burning-Plasma Dynamics"

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#42

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #32

azaras wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it simulate? Thanks.

Argonne National Labs, which is 5th fastest I think, is used for weather models, material science, and more[1] [1] http://www.alcf.anl.gov/

[deleted]

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#43

Post by striking » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:12 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #38

melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it kills me every time someone makes a silly comment like this. Someone has to spend the large amount of money for the R&D. Your model of how the world works is flawed. We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles? I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.

Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?

You can't deny that some of that stuff is pretty sweet. And ignoring where it came from requires rewriting history.

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#44

Post by danharaj » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #43

danharaj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?

You can't deny that some of that stuff is pretty sweet. And ignoring where it came from requires rewriting history.

I would not have wagered the world for what we got out of it. The fact that we're around to talk about it is fine and all, but the last century is not a good model for any century.

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#45

Post by dekhn » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:15 PM UTC

It looks like they are explicitly saying they want to make a machine that works for both types of HPC -- classic low-latency high-bandwidth internode communication (physics simulations) and modern Internet-driver high-bandwidth storage/node communications.

This is because the supercomputer community has long ignored the Internet-style of computation (MapReduce etc). But most of the new generation of scientists are adapting their codes to this new style, because dollar-for-dollar they can get more throughput than the classic style machines. Classic machines invest heavily in low-latency communication and typically require APIs like MPI to achieve it, while Internet HPC just uses well-designed TCP-based socket communications.

Building dual-design systems like this- especially when the community has little or no skill at building NG Internet HPC systems- is likely to produce a system that is good at few things.

Instead, build two systems. One is the largest (but not necessarily exaflop) you can afford and is a classic supercom[puter. Then, for the second, hire some datacenter designers from Google/Facebook and have them build a modern HPC cloud design.

The biologists will flock to the second one; they have long been underserved by the DOE supercomputing community.

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#46

Post by steego » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:15 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #38

melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it kills me every time someone makes a silly comment like this. Someone has to spend the large amount of money for the R&D. Your model of how the world works is flawed. We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles? I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.

Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?

I think he was extolling the virtues of large scale R&D spending and adding that the Cold War happened to be the impetus for this spending.

He parts with: "I wish private industry would do more." That seems to suggest his main point is large R&D spending, not the virtues of the Cold War.

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#47

Post by acaloiar » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #39

tdicola wrote: post #37

Don't we already have a exabyte-scale supercomputer in Utah run by the NSA?

Yeah, but everyone knows that thing's doing illegal stuff (illegal now or soon-to-be illegal), and Obama doesn't want that on his record.

Do you have a source for that information?

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#48

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:16 PM UTC

angdis wrote: post #20

I suppose that "supercomputers" are all multi-processor these days, so the colossal FLOP numbers are counted as an aggregation over many processors and one has to coordinate these processors in any application that takes advantage of the FLOP specs. Now I am curious what is the fastest single processor?

On a per-core basis, probably Power 8: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9193/the-xeon-e78800-v3-review...

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#49

Post by melling » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #38

melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it kills me every time someone makes a silly comment like this. Someone has to spend the large amount of money for the R&D. Your model of how the world works is flawed. We went to the moon because of the Cold War. The military paid for the development of the Internet. GPS? Supersonic flight? Nuclear energy? Autonomous vehicles? I wish private industry would do more. Every company should have a Bell Labs.

Are you extolling the virtues of a world that was shaped by the threat of nuclear annihilation for multiple generations?

No, militaries has been funding R&D long before the nuclear age.

http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online...

Rather than tell us how much you hate the military and capitalism maybe you can figure out a better way?

I'd love to see more non-military funding. Perhaps medical research could be used to increase public interest in funding supercomputer research?

Re: Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

#50

Post by madaxe_again » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

88e282102ae2e5b wrote: post #4

It kills me every time I read about how the world's nth-fastest computer is just used to simulate nuclear explosions, so it was a delight to see that they're planning on using this one for some good.

99% of the compute time on this will probably be used for weapons, combat and civil emergency wargame simulations - but that doesn't make for good PR so of course they don't mention it in this sycophantic fluff piece.