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    USA has a new supercomputer



    America’s new supercomputer beats China’s fastest machine to take title of world’s most powerful

    Summit is a stepping stone toward a world of exascale computing.
    The winner: The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has taken the wraps off Summit, which boasts peak computing power of 200 petaflops, or 200 million billion calculations a second. That makes it a million times faster than your typical laptop.
    The loser: China. Summit is 60 percent faster than the previous supercomputing leader, the Sunway TaihuLight based in the Chinese city of Wuxi. Consolation prize: China still boasted way more entries than the US in a list of the fastest 500 supercomputers published last year.
    AI smarts: Summit is the first supercomputer designed from the ground up to handle machine learning, neural networks, and other AI applications. Its many thousands of AI-optimized chips from Nvidia and IBM can handle demanding tasks, such as crunching through mountains of reports and medical images to help unearth hidden causes of disease.
    Supersized: The machine’s 4,608 servers and associated gear fill the space of two tennis courts and weigh more than a large commercial aircraft.
    Why this matters: Topping the supercomputing charts isn’t just a matter of national pride. The machines are widely used in industry and also for national security tasks, such as developing nuclear weapons. Lessons from Summit will also inform the push to create “exascale” computers capable of handling a billion billion calculations a second. These are expected to come online in the early 2020s.
    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

    #2
    Exciting times in computing and science/applied sciences for sure.

    Comment


      #3
      my youngest boy is/will be using this.

      Trump is "going back to basics' by pushing "man in space"... but...

      wait...

      he...AS DID OBAMA...

      just "moved money around'

      because...

      when I was sitting in "Trigonometry and Mathematics Analysis"...

      ummmmmmmmm

      duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh

      it was a LOT of time spent on "learning trig tables"...and then doing "trig"...

      but...next to my chair was a "wall shelf"...with the OLD AAAS magazine

      https://www.aaas.org/topics/science-magazine

      And BOEING ...

      had a "yellow page" printed IN YELLOW... discussing what "they were doing" but also...a "discussion" of "what was going on in "American science / engineering"...

      And a RECURRING topic was...

      "boom and bust"...

      "the Republicans built airplanes and tanks"...booom

      and

      "the Democrats took the money and spent it...dunno where..."... bust...

      that the "cycle" needed to be broken...

      so...

      EVEN THE DEMOCRATS... "move money around" to "keep the basic science going"...

      and the

      EVEN THE REPUBLICANS..."move money around" to "keep the social programs going"...

      My boy had his astronomy money cut by OBAMA...

      but...his paycheck was then moved to "department of defense"...

      Trump is elected and...

      is ACTUALLY CUTTING ALL OF IT if it is not "necessary"...

      a) please notice that although he "has gutted" "Obamacare"...the framework is still there...
      b) please notice that even though he has cut thousands of "federal jobs"...they were mostly "duplicates"...

      He has not actually cut any REAL job ...

      but...

      the point here is that my boy is using or will be using the computers because ...even Trump realizes that "BASIC SCIENCE" is "best done by...Neutral..." basic science and then APPLICATIONS...are best done by "industry" / "business"...

      the PROBLEM... is that "Universities"... have, over the last fifteen years or so have tried to "monetize' basic research

      a PRIME EXAMPLE BEING...

      "cold fusion"...,.

      the whole story is a FASCINATING EXAMPLE of how THE REAL...

      "scientific method" works...

      the original workers were using "this kind of equipment" and got really valid results...

      THE UNIVERSITY...immediately announced a controversial thing that they were going to PATENT the thing ...UNIMPLIED that they would reap the MONEY...

      THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE...was on national television...etc...

      UNFORTUNATELY...a bunch of STUDENTS kept posting contrary results...

      and then...it all came crashing down...

      the researchers DID NOTHING WRONG ...

      it was a situation about the EQUIPMENT ITSELF not being updated in its CALIBRATION...

      and when the equipment was calibrated in the new way...

      um...no cold fusion...

      BUT...it is all "time share" nowadays...

      and my boy is excited about the new capacity...

      he is working on "dark matter" now but he was originally working on the sloan sky project

      woodsmoke
      Last edited by woodsmoke; Jun 13, 2018, 01:02 AM.

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