Fastest supercomputer to be built

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p2p-sharing-rules
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Computer giant IBM will build the world's most powerful supercomputer at a US government laboratory.

The machine, codenamed Roadrunner, could be four times more potent than the current fastest machine, BlueGene/L, also built by IBM.

The new computer is a "hybrid" design, using both conventional supercomputer processors and the new "cell" chip designed for Sony's PlayStation 3.

Roadrunner will be installed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.

The laboratory is owned by the US Department of Energy (DOE). Eventually the machine could be used for a programme that ensures the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable, the DOE said in a statement.

Using supercomputers to simulate how nuclear materials age negates arguments for the resumption of underground nuclear testing.
Read more of the article @ BBC
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Amazing Peter P.
Interesting to compare the supercomputer in your article to something I read today.
A supercomputer of its time, known as the Turing Bombe.
World War II veterans are preparing to show the public how they cracked the Nazi Enigma codes for the first time since VE Day in 1945.

A team of 60 enthusiasts has spent 10 years building a working replica of the code-breaking machines that were used to decipher thousands of Nazi messages.


The machines were all dismantled in 1945 and no design drawings survived.

Later this month the replica will be shown at Bletchley Park, in Bucks, where the original codes were cracked.

John Harper, who led the project, said it took so long because there were "so many parts to it".

"The whole thing was to build it as authentically as possible - so we were very lucky that GCHQ provided us with quite a few drawings of individual parts.

"The difficulty was that we couldn't get any assembly drawings so we had to re-create those."

'Worked beautifully'

About 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park at the height of the war - mostly from the Women's Royal Naval Service.

One former employee was 82-year-old Jean Valentine, who described how the original machines "worked beautifully" and sounded like "lots of knitting machines".

She said all of the employees at the code-breaking station worked on a "need to know basis".

"I knew what I was doing but I didn't know what anyone else was doing."

At the time, Prime Minister Winston Churchill commended the women's discretion, reportedly praising them as "the geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled".

And it was Churchill who, after the war had finished, ordered the machines to be destroyed to keep them out of the wrong hands.

Many permutations

The code-breaking machine - known as the Turing Bombe - was the brainchild of mathematicians Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman.

The Nazi Enigma codes had baffled British and Polish cryptographers because there were so many millions of permutations.

At the start of the war the code-breakers used Polish machines but later Turing and Welchman redesigned them to enable more than 3,000 enemy messages to be decoded every day.

It is thought the intercepted messages helped the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles - so shortening the war by as much as two years.

Simon Greenish, director of Bletchley Park Trust, said the war-time facility was "one of the 20th Century's great stories".

"What was done at Bletchley has affected all our lives in one way or another because World War II would not have ended when it did if it wasn't for Bletchley," he said.

The reconstruction project will be open to the public from July 2007 - although people will be able to see the machine in action at the Churchill and Enigma Reunion weekend on 23 and 24 September.

http://tinyurl.com/md6ms
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Then:
Image

Now:
Image

*Bletchley Park seen in the 2001 movie - Enigma, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet.
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p2p-sharing-rules
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WOW it's Amazing how far we came technology wise since WW II.
I wonder what kind of super spying PC's they have now.
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moongirl
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Gulp!! Do you think we are using them? :lol:
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Figure this. In 1986 a supercomputer did about 4 MIPS (basically 4 million operations per second). Guess what, a 2002 Gateway machine does 4 MIPS.
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Bletchley Park the code-breaking centre seen in the 2001 movie - Enigma,
with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet, is currently in the news as pressure mounts to preserve the site.

moongirl wrote:Amazing Peter P.
Interesting to compare the supercomputer in your article to something I read today.
A supercomputer of its time, known as the Turing Bombe.
World War II veterans are preparing to show the public how they cracked the Nazi Enigma codes for the first time since VE Day in 1945.

A team of 60 enthusiasts has spent 10 years building a working replica of the code-breaking machines that were used to decipher thousands of Nazi messages.


The machines were all dismantled in 1945 and no design drawings survived.

Later this month the replica will be shown at Bletchley Park, in Bucks, where the original codes were cracked.

John Harper, who led the project, said it took so long because there were "so many parts to it".

"The whole thing was to build it as authentically as possible - so we were very lucky that GCHQ provided us with quite a few drawings of individual parts.

"The difficulty was that we couldn't get any assembly drawings so we had to re-create those."

'Worked beautifully'

About 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park at the height of the war - mostly from the Women's Royal Naval Service.

One former employee was 82-year-old Jean Valentine, who described how the original machines "worked beautifully" and sounded like "lots of knitting machines".

She said all of the employees at the code-breaking station worked on a "need to know basis".

"I knew what I was doing but I didn't know what anyone else was doing."

At the time, Prime Minister Winston Churchill commended the women's discretion, reportedly praising them as "the geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled".

And it was Churchill who, after the war had finished, ordered the machines to be destroyed to keep them out of the wrong hands.

Many permutations

The code-breaking machine - known as the Turing Bombe - was the brainchild of mathematicians Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman.

The Nazi Enigma codes had baffled British and Polish cryptographers because there were so many millions of permutations.

At the start of the war the code-breakers used Polish machines but later Turing and Welchman redesigned them to enable more than 3,000 enemy messages to be decoded every day.

It is thought the intercepted messages helped the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles - so shortening the war by as much as two years.

Simon Greenish, director of Bletchley Park Trust, said the war-time facility was "one of the 20th Century's great stories".

"What was done at Bletchley has affected all our lives in one way or another because World War II would not have ended when it did if it wasn't for Bletchley," he said.

The reconstruction project will be open to the public from July 2007 - although people will be able to see the machine in action at the Churchill and Enigma Reunion weekend on 23 and 24 September.

http://tinyurl.com/md6ms
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Then:
Image

Now:
Image

*Bletchley Park seen in the 2001 movie - Enigma, with Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet.

July 24, 2008
Scientists send clear message: save Bletchley Park



Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre that helped to win the Second World War and launch the modern computer, is in danger of irreparable decay unless the Government steps in to save it, some of the country’s leading computer scientists caution today.

In a letter to The Times, 97 senior experts, mostly professors and heads of department, say that “the ravages of age and a lack of investment” have left the historic site under threat.

One of the unheated wooden huts where the codebreakers worked day and night to turn the tide of the war now looks “like a garden shed that’s been left for 60 years”, according to Sue Black, head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster and one of the organisers of the letter.

Time was running out, she said. “If we don’t do something now we’re going to lose what’s left. If we leave it ten years it might be too late.”

The signatories call for Bletchley Park to be made the home of a national museum of computing. Bletchley is open to the public as a museum but receives no public funds and the signatories say that many of the huts where the codebreaking occurred are in a terrible state of repair.
For the full article go to:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 387286.ece
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