[DarkKnight]

Quote:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has signed an executive order authorizing the creation of new supercomputing research initiative called the National Strategic Computing Initiative, or NSCI. Its goal: pave the way for the first exaflop supercomputer—something that’s about 30 times faster than today’s fastest machines.

Supercomputers are at the heart of a huge number of important scientific and defense research projects. They’re used by aerospace engineers to model planes and weapons, and by climatologists to predict the the near-term impact of hurricanes and the long-term effects of climate change. Researchers involved in the White House’s Precision Medicine initiative believe exaflop speed supercomputers could aid the creation of personalized drugs, while the European Commission’s Human Brain Project hopes they will help unlock the secrets of the human brain.

Several government agencies, most notably the Department of Energy, have been deeply involved in the development of supercomputers over the last few decades, but they’ve typically worked separately. The new initiative will bring together scientists and government agencies such as the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation to create a common agenda for pushing the field forward.

The specifics are thin on the ground at the moment. The Department of Energy has already identified the major challenges preventing “exascale” computing today, according to a fact sheet released by the government, but the main goal of the initiative, for now, be to get disparate agencies working together on common goals.

It’s hard not to see the initiative as a response to China’s gains in supercomputing. Earlier this month TOP500, an organization that ranks supercomputers by performance, announced that China’s 33.86 petaflop Tianhe-2 is still the fastest supercomputer in the world. The US still has more computers on the TOP500 list than any other country in the world, but researchers have worried for years about falling behind China.

An exaflop is about 1,000 petaflops, and would represent a massive leap forward in computing power. But creating an exaflop computer is about more than just finding a way to build faster hardware. Creating applications that can take advantage of such an architecture is a challenge in its own right. NCSI will also prioritize the creation of supercomputers that can handle vast quantities of rapidly changing data.

Damn! Obama wants competition and heat :O

Source

[mothered]

Creating applications that can take advantage of such an architecture is a challenge in its own right.

I believe this Is a major factor. Software & hardware work hand In hand, If you don't have the software, the hardware Is pretty much futile and vice versa. A good analogy Is owning a car but not filling It with gas and expect to drive It.

[DarkKnight]

I believe this Is a major factor. Software & hardware work hand In hand, If you don't have the software, the hardware Is pretty much futile and vice versa. A good analogy Is owning a car but not filling It with gas and expect to drive It.

Rightly stated, he will need the correct assets because not everyone on this planet is capable of building a supercomputer.

[Jolly]

/BEGINNING OF RANT/

This projects success rate seems rater questionable, since it depends on so many government facilities to co-operate together to achieve such a landmark project of big proportions. Furthermore, the political landscape being the unstable landfill of shit it is, the project will probably either be buried under bureocracy, killed by the Congress or revoked depending on the results of the next presidential vote. The perfect parallel of that is the Star Wars race during the Cold War, the only reason it succeeded faster than the Russians after they got a massive head-start, was because the organizations in question answered to the president along with the budget being kept off by the fangs of the congress, which pretty much allowed for the fast development and results of the space program.

Bigger questions raise the operational order of who gets to use such a powerful computer, how will they distribute who will be able to use that, for what project and for how long. Like the article suggested, the demand for such a proficient supercomputer is high ranging from military to medicine and neuroscience and since this is mostly a government led project, it will be obvious that it will mostly serve for military purposes and then be buried under a mountain of paper work and bureocracy.

Furthermore, what point is there in just raising the amount of computational power that supercomputer can manage? Weren't scientist researching about the creation of a quantum computer whichs properties could achieve a far more significant results that a common cluster ever could? Fun fact: It toke the worlds fastest supercomputer two and a half days to to simulate ONE SECOND of the full brain. One, meager, second. Even if they could achieve the project, the results probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, considering its applications.

/END OF RANT/

[DarkKnight]

Like the article suggested, the demand for such a proficient supercomputer is high ranging from military to medicine and neuroscience and since this is mostly a government led project, it will be obvious that it will mostly serve for military purposes and then be buried under a mountain of paper work and bureocracy.

It is a supercomputer it makes one billion calculation per second and the person that will be lucky enough to operate this might make back doors into the system or use it for malicious activity, nevertheless even if it was to be used for military use it might be used for covert black op missions to ruin other goverments.

[Jolly]

It is a supercomputer it makes one billion calculation per second and the person that will be lucky enough to operate this might make back doors into the system or use it for malicious activity, nevertheless even if it was to be used for military use it might be used for covert black op missions to ruin other goverments.

Supercomputers to my knowledge aren't really something you ruin governments with. I mean, yes, they could use it to brute-force encryption must most of the delicate stuff is under really heavy stuff that pretty much is impossible to brute force on their own (Was it AES?). When it comes to military it would pretty much just be simulations, etc.

Even more, supercomputers are sold with "runtimes" which dictate how long an organization can access it, something akin to Cloud Computing, at least I know that's how they do it when it comes to calculating the weather.

[DarkKnight]

Supercomputers to my knowledge aren't really something you ruin governments with. I mean, yes, they could use it to brute-force encryption must most of the delicate stuff is under really heavy stuff that pretty much is impossible to brute force on their own (Was it AES?). When it comes to military it would pretty much just be simulations, etc.

The use of supercomputers is pretty the government dictating the terms of its use anyway but you have a point.

[insane]

Damn. Imagine how fast that thing could run through a 100GB password list.