China Overtakes U.S. with World's Fastest Supercomputer

[Wintermoot]

I hope it doesnt become sentient and start killing people

 

[lostzombies.com]

The computer's made for research, why would it have an internet connection?

Who said anything about an internet connection? Iran's powerplants are not connected to the internet yet they have been infected with a government made virus.

 

[Fallen-Angel Risen-Demon]

Why the hell is this a smart use of money, what possible use would this serve? it feels like amazing case of overkill.

My guess, dick-waving.
OT: I'm really not suprised that it's China, they'll probably overtake the USA as the worlds greatest superpower before the end of the decade and definetely by 2020.

 

[Runsta]

Damn... guess we need to make an update to our 3 year old supercomputer. let the supercomputer race begin! onward to making our own overlords!

 

[Citrus]

But will it blend?

 

[Xan Krieger]

...So what does it actually do except spend all day computing pi?

I thought of how fast that thing could compute every number of PI and got a headache. Gonna laugh when that sucker blue screens though.

 

[Cat Cloud]

I want to know what they will use it for. There's no way the US will be able to catch up. The government doesn't even have enough people to stop hackers from hacking the Pentagon, from what I've heard.

 

[Svenparty]

This comes in eerily close to the News of Gene Simmons VS Anonymous...

Perhaps those Hackers on Steroids have found a way to spam people at a 1000000000000000% effectiveness using this machine.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

That is awesome, though I still cannot keep a straight face with the term "petaflop" flying around her- *Giggle*.

..Damn it!

 

[Risingblade]

So just how much time will they spend using it to watch porn..

 

[frago roc]

More important than anything is what science is being accomplished with these computers.

Depends, some medical companies use them to simulate protein folding.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

So what exactly is the point of something like this? Is there any application on the planet that requires anything even remotely close to that much processing power?

To me, it seems like an $88 million waste of electricity.

 

[Kavonde]

That's good and all, but will it blend?

But will it blend?

"So...why, exactly, do you want access to our supercomputer?"

"Well, I have this show, you see. On the internet."

"Yes?"

"It's sort of an advertisement for my company, BlendTec."

"Yes, and?"

"Well, see, on the show, I take things...usually things people don't put in blenders, you see...and I put them in one of our BlendTec blenders."

"..."

"And then I blend them."

"..."

"...So...I was sort of hoping..."

"You want to blend our multi-million dollar supercomputer."

"Yes."

"...The entire thing?"

"Well, you know, a little bit at a time."

"...Get out of my country."

 

[Leopard]

Reckon it could run New Vegas without crashing?

 

[Merkavar]

I think it's good that the US has someone to measure up against again. Countries are at their best when competing in one form or another against someone else. It happenned with the US during the cold war, but since the fall of the Soviet Union the country has stagnated somewhat. Now that they have a new rival on the world scene they might want to charge forward again.

im pretty sure the US has had competition before now, in alot of areas. one area is Reading, Scientific and Mathematical Literacy Scales where of the oecd countries they didnt rank higher than 22nd. beaten by the UK, korea, New zealand etc. so the us has stagnated for some other reason other than lack of competition. maybe poor leadership, policies etc.

i want them to shrink this computer down so the next round of playstations and xbox can run at 2 petaflops.

anyone know what sort of scientific research they would use a computer like this for? hope its something useful or atleast interesting.

 

[rsacks]

Don't worry guys, the US has this under control.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26599.wss

In 2012 a ~20 petaflop machine will be crunching out numbers at a national lab.

The problem with supercomputing is what to do with the massive amounts of data being generated, how do you link it together to so you can actually work with it and analyze it? It's a huge problem that requires that the software developers work hand in hand with the hardware designers. Interestingly enough random bit flipping, caused by both cosmic rays and quantum mechanical effects also becomes and issue due to the HUGE number of processors and cores being used.

Also supercomputers do help the public sector, why do you think quadcores and above are now available?