Cell-based "Roadrunner" Tops Elusive Petaflop Mark

prunedude writes "The NY times is reporting that an American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, is more than twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer, the I.B.M. BlueGene/L. To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day."

Re:Ummm

[francium de neobie]

They're trying to pull 1000 times your lab's results.

But can it run....

[CastrTroy]

By can it run Crysis?

Re:Question

[anaesthetica]

What exactly would the military use a supercomputer for?

The military will use this advanced technology to assist and perhaps automate the RTFA process, also known as Reading The Fucking Article, which would allow you to answer your query without posting.

I feel bad for Whyle E. ...

[CaptainPatent]

...There's no catapult in the world that will catch THAT roadrunner!

Re:But can it run....

[setagllib]

The marketing for that game was done all wrong. Insiders report that it was meant as an interactive preview of 3DMark2020.

so what else is new?

[WheresMyDingo]

the roadrunner always wins, so it no surprise it topped this "petaflop mark" guy (yeesh, what a name).

and roadrunner's always been cel-based, at least in the modern era. i bought one of those cels from the warner bros. store before they went under, nice one too with his tongue sticking out

Perspective?

[Bob54321]

To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day."

That really put it in perspective for me. I normally judge a supercomputer by how many "all Earth people hand calculation years" it can do in a day...

Back it my day!

[Anonymous Coward]

The kids these days are lazy, back in my day if we wanted to know if a nuke worked we'd take it out back test it!
Whatever happened to nuked marsh mellows or sitting round with Geiger counters trying to make funny sounds?
Kids are lazy these days!

calculators

[hansoloaf]

I bet if everyone had the TI-57, it'll take the aforementioned 46 years.
But the TI-68 will cut it down to 23 years.

Re:But can it run....

[beav007]

Can it even run Vista Ultimate?

Re:But can it run....

[nawcom]

Hah you think the military is dumb enough to even install Vista? Haven't you ever heard of military intelli... errm.. nevermind. Yeah, I'm sure they have it installed already.

Re:Perspective?

[Digestromath]

Normally I would compare computers by floating operations per second. However sicne I guess we are going back to the old style of comparing it to people doing calculations by hand. What about all the people on earth using abaci 24/7? Or by leagues per bushel over cubits squared?

Computing the data pyramids

[Eternal Vigilance]

Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week...

I think this analogy may reveal a little more than intended about government's vision for humanity.

"Let my people goto!"

The result of their research:

[suck_burners_rice]

The answer is 42. The question is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Perspective?

[Thalin]

At IBM we like to measure things in "Libraries of Congress per second", or perhaps "747s of phonebooks per second". ;)

WTF happened to plain old units of measure?

[PseudoThink]

if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day

I'm glad to see the continuing trend of creatively "dumbing down" units of measure (in this case, flops) to the point where they are not only practically useless, but entirely divorced from reality. I would like to propose the following similar, hype-worthy measure for fuel economy:

Old: Miles per gallon
New: Number of miles from which one would smell the excrement from the number of cattle one could feed for a day with the amount of corn it would take to produce one gallon.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

And I've heard that republicans eat babies. As someone who has worked with climate models including data collection I can safely say you're full of shit. There are thousands of research stations collecting the data. For it to be generally corrupted, there'd have to be some vast global conspiracy whereby publically competing research stations and countries agree to privately skew their data.

Now there IS something of a vast global conspiracy (PNAC, Republicans, Bilderberg, etc), but, er, it's not on the pro-environmental-sanity side.

FWIW, if anything, the climate change stuff you usually see is an underestimate. 8-(

Explore scientific problems like climate change?

[hamster_nz]

The article mentions that it will be used to explore climate change. At 3MW, perhaps it is likely to cause climate change!

Re:But can it run....

[Warll]

Mah I'm a PC gamer myself, haven't used a handheld in years.

Re:so what else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

you suck
your sense of humour is extremely weak
fuck off

Re:Question

[Brian Gordon]

Quick, make it play tic tac toe against itself.

Re:Question

[kylehase]

Perhaps they should invest in a computer to track warhead parts.

Re:But can it run....

[Hojima]

Windows: End Program - Untitled - Nuclear Defense. This program is not responding. To return to Windows and check the status of the program, click Cancel. If you choose to end the program immediately, you will loose any unprotected civilians. To end the program now, click End Now. Army personnel: Sir, I think we should send an error report.

Re:NOT MILITARY!

[mrbluze]

It's the department of energy, not the military. Specifically, it is at Los Alamos, which is not a military base.

What, you mean hundreds of moderator points were wasted on above military-related posts? Woohoo!! Bingo baby!

Re:Question

[ediron2]

What exactly would the military use a supercomputer for?

They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.

Allow me to oblige ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

Take everyone on earth, and put them each in a different Ferrari Testarossa [wikipedia.org] with no engine, no gas in the tank, and no ignition system. That is how fast this thing moves.

Some other equally useful analogies:

Take the same aforementioned people, and give them a OLPC. The amount of time it takes them all to calculate their degree of separation from Kevin Bacon [wikipedia.org], and divide by a googolplex [wikipedia.org]. , then round up. That is the number of people that think the calculator analogy in the article was a good one.

Take the inverse of the clock frequency and multiply it by the number of instructions required for Windows to boot far enough to attempt to obtain an IP Address dynamically. Add to that the time it takes for the DHCP request to reach your Billion made router [apcmag.com]. That is the amount of time it takes for it to hose your router. Take the inverse of the clock frequency and multiply it by the number of instructions it takes to apply a service pack. Add it to the boot time, calculated as described above. That is the amount of time it takes to achieve a BSOD.

HTH,

- Thomas P. D'Agostino

Re:But can it run....

[pha7boy]

military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines

yes. yes it can. and, most likely, it will also blend.

Re:Question

[x2A]

The previous model used hundreds of dual core P4s, just running NOP's at full speed. The heat generated, being equivelant to that outputted by a nuke, meant they could run simulations without having to actually write any code.

But will it run..

[Anonymous Coward]

Coyotos? [coyotos.org]

[they do get a lot of military funding, iirc.]

Re:ummm...

[x2A]

Grr, we're already overpopulated without everyone on the planet multiplying t the same time.

Re:Ummm

[jacquesm]

maybe he should get 6 billion hand calculators and mail them out ?

That's probably a new contender for the stupidest metric ever, it beats 'libraries of congress per second' hands down.

Re:exaflop, zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraf

[Alpha Whisky]

On the other hand, it'll also make it easier to figure out how to make bigger sticks that are lighter and sharper.

You mean they are taking Einstein's prediction that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones seriously, and want to be ready for it?

Re:But can it run....

[asc99c]

I was just assuming while the nuclear defenses were down, the unprotected civilians were being catapulted to safety. Or certain death for the ones not wearing parachutes.

Re:Not in perspective - this is a media number

[swillden]

That's assuming you have to try every single key to break 128-bit SSL encryption. Is that actually the case?

Unless the 128-bit cipher being used is weak, that is the worst case, and the average case is that it takes half that long.