The Race Is On For The World's First Exaflop Supercomputer

[Guest]

President Obama wants the United States to lead the charge in supercomputer power, and he has just signed an executive order launching an effort to ensure that happens.


The Race Is On For The World's First Exaflop Supercomputer : Read more

 

[Vlad Rose]

Skynet, here we come.

 

[nevilence]

Skynet, here we come.

Come now, even the end of humanity needs a shinny toy

 

[Guest]

So, humm, Nvidia is going to get a boatload of money to make a supercomputer we don't need?

What a waste of money. I think I read that for 16 billion, you could reduce the cost of university by half. Instead, let's make a supercomputer that will be used to ego boosting!

 

[MasterMace]

Weather models are getting more accurate as the computers calculating them get more powerful. Picture a weather model 30 times more robust than what you have today. Superstorm Sandy was projected 7 days in advance. New England doesn't even bother with predictions further than 3 days due to inaccuracy. Figure that storms coming off Africa will have much higher predictions. If you can see a storm coming from 2 weeks out with a high degree of accuracy, that is extremely important.

That's just your day to day life. Genetics is another thing requiring large amounts of computational power. This will help cure diseases, and discover ones that exist that we don't know about.

 

[jaber2]

We already have the CPU power, unfortunately this power is currently used it to take images of our private parts and send it to each other, if they could come up with a app that can use smartphones to execute a part of the program then we wouldn't need to build these.

 

[kcarbotte]

We already have the CPU power, unfortunately this power is currently used it to take images of our private parts and send it to each other, if they could come up with a app that can use smartphones to execute a part of the program then we wouldn't need to build these.

I don't want my battery being drained even more than it already is. As it stands many modern smartphones can't make it through the day without a batter backup helping it along. No one wants thier phone being used when it's not them using it.

To paraphrase something Neil Degrass-Tyson said, taking away the funding from NASA takes away the publics ability to dream of the future.
Well I'd say this qualifies as a good stand-in.

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

 

[emergent84]

No one in the world is going to build an exoscale SC without IBM, Intel, Nvidia processors, chip-sets, interconnects ,etc. Only China and the US will build one. And the US has somewhat attempted to crackdown on China Gov't using these. No doubt China has a workaround. It will be interesting to see what kind a shell company or University China has to acquire "legally" the massive amounts of US tech. I would like to see the US Gov't either buy up all the supplies, or an export ban for the next two gens of US HPC related components.

 

[dstarr3]

So, humm, Nvidia is going to get a boatload of money to make a supercomputer we don't need?

What a waste of money. I think I read that for 16 billion, you could reduce the cost of university by half. Instead, let's make a supercomputer that will be used to ego boosting!

You're right. Let's just stagnate and never progress or grow again.

 

[JPNpower]

We already have the CPU power, unfortunately this power is currently used it to take images of our private parts and send it to each other, if they could come up with a app that can use smartphones to execute a part of the program then we wouldn't need to build these.

Umm... BOINC?
or Folding@Home?

 

[falchard]

Man I hate Obama. Another executive order. He is acting more like a King than a President.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

A super computer of that magnitude of power will definitely require rethinking our current tech.

{tinfoil hat}
of course that much computing power will make it MUCH easier for big brother to keep an eye on you and everyone else at the same time in minute detail.
{/tinfoil hat}

 

[fixxxer113]

So, humm, Nvidia is going to get a boatload of money to make a supercomputer we don't need?

What a waste of money. I think I read that for 16 billion, you could reduce the cost of university by half. Instead, let's make a supercomputer that will be used to ego boosting!

I hope you realize the irony of your post, as universities are the entities that will mostly use something like that.

People like you make me mad... there is so much wasted money in the world for all sorts of crap and you blame scientific progress...

Even if they made it just to see if it'll work, that would justify it as a scientific breakthrough by itself. The research and innovation that will go into building such a computer will definitely help in other areas of research as well.

 

[Niikuman]

Man I hate Obama. Another executive order. He is acting more like a King than a President.

https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/mehta-datalab-executiveorders1.png?w=610&h=1116
It must be hard being so confused all the time.

 

[Dee Lee]

We already have the CPU power, unfortunately this power is currently used it to take images of our private parts and send it to each other, if they could come up with a app that can use smartphones to execute a part of the program then we wouldn't need to build these.

I don't want my battery being drained even more than it already is. As it stands many modern smartphones can't make it through the day without a batter backup helping it along. No one wants thier phone being used when it's not them using it.

To paraphrase something Neil Degrass-Tyson said, taking away the funding from NASA takes away the publics ability to dream of the future.
Well I'd say this qualifies as a good stand-in.

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

We already have the CPU power, unfortunately this power is currently used it to take images of our private parts and send it to each other, if they could come up with a app that can use smartphones to execute a part of the program then we wouldn't need to build these.

I don't want my battery being drained even more than it already is. As it stands many modern smartphones can't make it through the day without a batter backup helping it along. No one wants thier phone being used when it's not them using it.

To paraphrase something Neil Degrass-Tyson said, taking away the funding from NASA takes away the publics ability to dream of the future.
Well I'd say this qualifies as a good stand-in.

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

So what you're saying is we need this but I don't want to pay for it.

 

[toadhammer]

Mmmm! Building giant pink cupcakes!

 

[toadhammer]

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

Yup to all of these. But I can guarantee it will be used for encryption cracking too.

 

[husker]

Weather models are getting more accurate as the computers calculating them get more powerful. Picture a weather model 30 times more robust than what you have today. Superstorm Sandy was projected 7 days in advance. New England doesn't even bother with predictions further than 3 days due to inaccuracy. Figure that storms coming off Africa will have much higher predictions. If you can see a storm coming from 2 weeks out with a high degree of accuracy, that is extremely important.

That's just your day to day life. Genetics is another thing requiring large amounts of computational power. This will help cure diseases, and discover ones that exist that we don't know about.

The inaccuracy in things such as weather prediction are possibly due more to the limitation of prediction models due to chaos theory than computational power.

 

[Vlad Rose]

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

Yup to all of these. But I can guarantee it will be used for encryption cracking too.

Why? Outside of decrypting foreign country messages, the government can decrypt anything they want in the US; whether they tell you they can or cannot.

 

[JPNpower]

We need this kind of computational power to learn more about the human brain.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate weather systems
We need this kind of computational power to simulate deep space travel for manned and unmanned craft.
We need this kind of computational power to simulate new energy production methods before actually attempting them.

There's countless uses for supercomputers, that's why developped nations around the world have been building them for decades.

Yup to all of these. But I can guarantee it will be used for encryption cracking too.

Brute force 256bit AES

 

[Darkk]

It's really a secret NSA project to decrypt the encrypted e-mails.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Brute force 256bit AES

Good luck with that.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Brute force 256bit AES

Good luck with that.

Haha, even if they managed to even crack 256 bit after a few years. All of use would just move to 1024bit AES.

 

[Tech_Ferret]

Anyone reflect on this being actioned via "Executive Order"? Executive orders are issued in a state of War ..... considering the string of executive orders issued since 9/11 and prior, it seems we've been in constant war in one form or another for decades. That's how they by-pass Congress and the Con-stitutuon .....
So this Exaflop Computer when completed will be primarily for military purposes .....

 

[Dee Lee]

"it seems we've been in constant war in one form or another for decades."

Apparently you don't watch Fox News.