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Thread: but can it run solitare?

  1. #1
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    but can it run solitare?



    WASHINGTON - Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.

    The technology breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp. on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.

    The computer, named Roadrunner, is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.

    "The computer is a speed demon. It will allow us to solve tremendous problems," said Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons research and maintains the warhead stockpile.

    But officials said the computer also could have a wide range of other applications in civilian engineering, medicine and science, from developing biofuels and designing more fuel-efficient cars to finding drug therapies and providing services to the financial industry.

    To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

    The IBM and Los Alamos engineers worked six years on the computer technology.

    Some elements of the Roadrunner can be traced back to popular video games, said David Turek, vice president of IBM's supercomputing programs. In some ways, he said, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3."

    "We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability," said Turek.

    But the Roadrunner supercomputer, named after the New Mexico state bird, is nothing like a video game.

    The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory housed in 288 connected refrigerator-sized racks.

    The cost: $100 million.

    Turek said the computer in a two-hour test on May 25 achieved a "petaflop" speed of sustained performance, something no other computer had ever done. It did so again in several real applications involving classified nuclear weapons work this past weekend.

    "This is a huge and remarkable achievement," said Turek in a conference call with reporters.

    A "flop" is an acronym meaning floating-point-operations per second. One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. Only two years ago, there were no actual applications where a computer achieved 100 teraflops — a tenth of Roadrunner's speed — said Turek, noting that the tenfold advancement came over a relatively short time.

    The Roadrunner computer, now housed at the IBM research laboratory in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be moved next month to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

    Along with other supercomputers, it will be key "to assure the safety and security of our (weapons) stockpile," said D'Agostino. With its extraordinary speed it will be able to simulate the performances of a warhead and help weapons scientists track warhead aging, he said.

    But the computer — and more so the technology that it represents — marks a future for a wide range of other research and uses. "The technology will be pronounced in its employment across industry in the years to come," predicted Turek, the IBM executive.

    Michael Anastasio, director of the Los Alamos lab, said that for the first six months the computer will be used in unclassified work including activities not related to the weapons program. After that, about three-fourths of the work will involve weapons and other classified government activities.

    Anastasio said the computer, in its unclassified applications, is expected to be used not only by Los Alamos scientists but others as well. He said there can be broad applications such as helping to develop a vaccine for the HIV virus, examine the chemistry in the production of cellulosic ethanol, or to understand the origins of the universe.

    Turek said the computer represents still another breakthrough, particularly important in these days of expensive energy: It is an energy miser compared with other supercomputers, performing 376 million calculations for every watt of electricity used.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  2. #2
    supervillain gerbick's Avatar
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    hmmm... perhaps it'll finally play Crysis with all effects turned on...

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  3. #3
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    I wonder if by the time we die we will have that computing power in our hands.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  4. #4
    Chaos silverx2's Avatar
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    pshh crysis?! are you guys serious?! that game isnt even supported any more, that game is old news. Now if it can play crisis: warhead, then ill be impressed.
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  5. #5
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    warhead? off to google.

    Crysis died because of pirating.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  6. #6
    supervillain gerbick's Avatar
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    Crysis is dead?

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  7. #7
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    They aren't making anymore patches for it. They are gonig right to Warhead which from my quick google looks like it will either be an expansion or sequel(or episodes just like half life)

    Crysis was supposed to be a HUGE money maker for the company but it became the most pirated game of all time and the company didn't make it's predicted amounts of profit.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  8. #8
    Total Universe Mod jAQUAN's Avatar
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    They really blame it on piracy? No one I know even wanted to install it.

  9. #9
    Chaos silverx2's Avatar
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    it was also a pretty crappy game. Sure it looked pretty, and had some good ideas, but it was such a bad play, just like farcry.
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  10. #10
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    Maybe far cry 2 will be better...
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  11. #11
    Chaos silverx2's Avatar
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    i seriously doubt it.

    i believe you can play as 9 out of 12 main characters.. why not all 12? because 3 of them are women, and they didn't want to have to pay a woman to come in and read all main character lines.

    so regardless of who you are playing as, everyone keeps the same voices.

    that is a lack of polish that is pretty ridiculous..
    to this day i have nightmares about how bad farcry ended. Such a horrible ending to a game. so anticlimatic.
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  12. #12
    He has risen! lefteyewilly's Avatar
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    for a computer that big, i'm surprised it only has 80TB of memory. I know that's a lot, but i figured it'd get into the 500TB territory for something with that many processors and such.

  13. #13
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    Well just because it is big doesn't mean storage. Most of that room is probably to house the almost 6500 cpus. They said the power of it will be used to help others who need this type of computing as well which I am sure will be sent little by little over a fiber network and stored where ever the other company is.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  14. #14
    He has risen! lefteyewilly's Avatar
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    by big, i meant powerful

  15. #15
    supervillain gerbick's Avatar
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    That works out to be about 4gb per processor.

    Now watch my math be all screwed up.

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  16. #16
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    1024 x 80 / 6948 = 11.94.....
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  17. #17
    supervillain gerbick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WannaBe_80z
    1024 x 80 / 6948 = 11.94.....
    6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines...
    The $133 million supercomputer achieved the milestone with the help of 12,960 "improved" Cell processors (yes, like those powering your PS3) and a smaller number of AMD Opteron processors -- 116,640 processor cores in total.
    Now... as it stands... 1 terabyte = 1000gb. 80tb = 80000gb. 80000gb / 19908 (total processors) = 4.01848503...

    I'm sorta neglecting the 1024 byte size... 80k gb / 1024b = 78.125k gb (actual size)

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  18. #18
    Senior Member WannaBe_80z's Avatar
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    touche. but should we get technical and count each dualcore as 2?

    posting on the psp is such a hassle.
    "Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous."- T. McKenna

  19. #19
    pablo cruisin' hanratty21's Avatar
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    Does it make porn run better/faster? If not...not interested.
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