Free Republic

What is a zettabyte, what is exascale supercomputing, and what could be achieved with that massive amount of computing and storage resources--by entities that the public doesn't even know about? In this post, I’m going to introduce you to some fresh ideas about massive-scale data centers and supercomputing—like the ones used by certain three-letter agencies—and speculate about a possible use case for that enormous scale of storage and computing. Do I know for certain what they use these massive computing resources for? No, I don’t. What I’m going to discuss is (hopefully) just a thought exercise—one that I’ll use to...

Powerful computers 'mining' for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin are driving global warming as data shows they use vastly more electricity than all the internet tech giants combined. Bitcoin passed the $60,000 mark for the first time on Saturday, but its rocketing value again raises questions over the vast energy resources required to run machines that mine for the cryptocurrency, that some - including billionaire Warren Buffet - even consider to be worthless. On March 2, Bitcoin's estimated energy consumption reached its highest ever rate, hitting a staggering 130.90 terawatt hours (TWh) annualised. The following week... ...March 3 was at a rate...

BERKELEY, Calif.; FRANKFURT, Germany; and KNOXVILLE, Tenn.— The 53rd edition of the TOP500 marks a milestone in the 26-year history of the list. For the first time, all 500 systems deliver a petaflop or more on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, with the entry level to the list now at 1.022 petaflops. Top 10 rundownThe top of the list remains largely unchanged, with only two new entries in the top 10, one of which was an existing system that was upgraded with additional capacity.Two IBM-built supercomputers, Summit and Sierra, installed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)...

Japan-based Sakae Casting opened first U.S. location in the eastern region of The Gem State in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Sakae Casting specializes in castings for inserting stainless steel pipes into an aluminum casting product with minimized clearance, necessary for optimal performance of semi-conductors and super computers. The Idaho Falls location will give Sakae the best U.S. location to work directly with the University of Idaho, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the region’s extensive nuclear and advanced manufacturing sectors to further their research capabilities and U.S. product sales. "It is my mission to create job opportunities in Eastern Idaho to support...

Turbulence can be an uncomfortable and unpleasant experience. And climate change is about to make it an increasingly common one, according to a new study. Using supercomputer simulations of the atmosphere, researchers at the University of Reading, in England, looked at the future of severe turbulence. "Our new study paints the most detailed picture yet of how aircraft turbulence will respond to climate change," Paul Williams, who undertook the research, said in a statement. "For most passengers, light turbulence is nothing more than an annoying inconvenience that reduces their comfort levels, but for nervous fliers even light turbulence can be...

Climate is complex.This is true both in the conventional “wow, this is hard to figure out!” sense, and in the technical sense that people mean when they talk about “complex systems theory.” It’s so sensitive to the initial assumptions that it’s never feasible to compute exactly how the system will behave. Sometimes this is called “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” or SDIC.This is basically why we can’t predict if it will rain on Monday, yet we can confidently predict that it’ll be colder in Boulder in December than it was in July.The difference here is between what is exactly true,...

An ultracompact beamsplitter – the smallest one in the world – has been designed and fabricated by researchers in the US. Using a newly developed algorithm, the team built the smallest integrated polarization beamsplitter to date, which could allow computers and mobile devices of the future to function millions of times faster than current machines.

University of Utah engineers have taken a step forward in creating the next generation of computers and mobile devices capable of speeds millions of times faster than current machines. The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter—the smallest on record—for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information. The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons. Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues describe their invention today in the journal Nature Photonics. Silicon photonics could significantly increase the power and speed of machines such...

In an effort to give the U.S. a leg up when it comes to supercomputers, the Department of Energy announced its plans to build two GPU-powered supercomputers that will bring the world closer to exascale computing. The DOE is awarding $325 million to build “Summit” for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and “Sierra” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California while an additional $100 million will go into research for “extreme scale supercomputing” technology. The supercomputers are expected to be installed in 2017 using next-generation IBM POWER servers coupled with NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators and NVIDIA...

Dozens of neuroscientists are protesting Europe’s $1.6 billion attempt to recreate the functioning of the human brain on supercomputers, fearing it will waste vast amounts of money and harm neuroscience in general. The 10-year Human Brain Project is largely funded by the European Union. In an open letter issued Monday, more than 190 neuroscience researchers called on the EU to put less money into the effort to “build” a brain, and to invest instead in existing projects. …

If doubts lingered about a major shift in supercomputer technology, the latest ranking Monday of the 500 largest scientific systems should dispel them–as well as any fears that China might claim a lead in the field anytime soon.The latest Top500 list–compiled twice a year based on results of standard speed tests–anoints a machine called Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the speediest on the planet. This wasn’t too much of a surprise based on the lab’s recent comments about the system.But the Titan’s ascendance nevertheless is a milestone for efforts to popularize system designs that use two varieties of...

China has taken the lead in the supercomputer (the fastest computers on the planet) race, having built a 155 ton system using 7,168 GPUs (Graphic Processing Units, from high end graphic cards) and 14,336 CPUs to achieve peak performance of 2.507 petaflops (a petaflop is one million billion floating point operations per second, otherwise known as FLOPS). Sustained speed is 563 teraflops (one thousand billion). The Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer cost $88 million, requires 4.04 magawatts of power and occupies 1,000 square meters (10,764 square feet). Given that China manufactures a growing share of electronic items, and Chinese students have long...

Advanced computing is the backbone of the Department of Defense and of critical strategic importance to our nation’s defense. All DoD sensors, platforms and missions depend heavily on computer systems. To meet the escalating demands for greater processing performance, it is imperative that future computer system designs be developed to support new generations of advanced DoD systems and enable new computing application code. Targeting this crucial need, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has initiated the Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) program to create an innovative, revolutionary new generation of computing systems that overcomes the limitations of current evolutionary...

U.S. Department of Energy scientists say they've created a computer algorithm that allows a substantially enhanced view of nuclear fission. The Argonne National Laboratory scientists said the algorithm, known as the neutron transport code, enables researchers for the first time to obtain a highly detailed description of a nuclear reactor core. "The code could prove crucial in the development of nuclear reactors that are safe, affordable and environmentally friendly," laboratory officials said in a statement. To model the complex geometry of a reactor core currently requires billions of spatial elements, hundreds of angles and thousands of energy groups -- all...

The military is a major user of supercomputers (the fastest computers on the planet). These machines were first developed, as were the first computers, for military applications. These ultra-powerful computers are used for code breaking, and to help design weapons (including nukes) and equipment (especially electronics). The military is also needs lots of computing power for data mining (pulling useful information, about the enemy, from ever larger masses of information.) Because there's never enough money to buy all the super-computers (which are super expensive) needed, military researchers have come up with ways to do it cheaper. A decade ago, it...

Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered a crisis of confidence in the U.S. that helped drive the creation of a space program. Now, Russia is comparing the U.S.'s achievements in supercomputing with theirs, and they don't like what they see. In a speech on Tuesday, Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, criticized his country's IT industry almost to the point of sarcasm for failing to develop supercomputing technology, and urged a dramatic change in Russia's use of high-performance computing. Medvedev, at the opening address of a Security Council Meeting on Supercomputers in Moscow, told attendees that 476 out of the 500...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. government scientists Friday said the long-term outlook for global warming may be more dire than suggested by this week's United Nations' report, which they say doesn't fully address the impact of clouds and melting glaciers. Recent evidence of accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic ice cap came too late to be included in the report released Thursday by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Glaciers are among the largest sources of fresh water in the world and are contributing to rising ocean levels. Rising sea levels could expose population centers bordering the ocean...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21 — The Pentagon awarded almost $500 million in contracts to I.B.M. and Cray Inc. on Tuesday to design a supercomputer several times as fast as today’s most powerful systems. The Cray contract is for $250 million and the I.B.M. contract is for $244 million, to be spent during the next four years. They prevailed over Sun Microsystems.The contracts are part of the High Productivity Computing Systems program being led by the Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. The program aims to achieve and surpass the ability to calculate more than a...

Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread. Our FreeRepublic team of 358 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE). Currently, the team is in 75th place (with 1,020 active CPUs - 70,500 completed Work Units and 12.75 million points). This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please...

Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread. Our FreeRepublic team of 358 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE). Currently, the team is in 75th place (with 1009 active CPUs - 55,700 completed Work Units and 9.75 million points). This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please...