US Supercomputer Lead Sparks Russian Govt's Competitive Drive 74
CWmike writes "Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered a crisis of confidence in the US that helped drive the creation of a space program. Now, Russia is comparing the US's achievements in supercomputing with theirs, and they don't like what they see. In a speech on Tuesday, Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, criticized his country's IT industry almost to the point of sarcasm for failing to develop supercomputing technology, and urged a dramatic change in Russia's use of high-performance computing. Medvedev, at the opening address of a Security Council Meeting on Supercomputers in Moscow, told attendees that 476 out of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list were manufactured in the United States. 'Therefore, in general, our situation is very difficult,' he said."
In soviet russia... (Score:1, Redundant)
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In Soviet Russia, super computer created from YOU!
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The obvious answer to this story is...start another botnet.
If botnets were added to the supercomputer ranking, where would they be? And how many are Russian?
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Remarkable Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Send some dudes to America with some cash and buy some nice computing equipment. Do you have some serious computing to do? Or do you have a serious need to build new computers?
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So much trivia, so little time to pass it all along . . .
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Send some dudes to America with some cash and buy some nice computing equipment. Do you have some serious computing to do? Or do you have a serious need to build new computers?
I think the later. It's more a question of national pride than a pressing need to do some super computing. That and a fear of falling too far behind in technology.
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The brilliance of russian thrift and efficiency (no doubt brought about by scarcity) is unmatched by the west's treadmill of newer and better, which is disruptive to integration and has lead to many technological dead ends and restarts. Not to mention inability to reproduce past results.
An example is their space launch systems that run like clockwork, while ARES designs call for a 6 ton rubber damper be added.
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I doubt the Soviet Union my mistake Russia will make this mistake again see link.
http://slashdot.org/it/04/02/02/1153243.shtml [slashdot.org]
I sure hope they can create that need (Score:2, Interesting)
I hate an arms-race as much as the next guy, but imagine if all the showmanship from whose nukepeen was bigger in the cold war could go towards supercomputing or fuel efficiency as the primary goal instead of a spin-off.
No cold war fear, just politicians whipping out their huge... processors... as part of a rallying call.
So, drop the gauntlet Medvedev, or e-trousers as the case may be.
-Matt
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USSR used to be a major aircraft manufacturer, be it military or civil (Tu-104 was the first reliable jet airliner, Tu-204 was the second fly by wire airliner and so on). Nowadays the Russian aircraft industry has fallen behind Brazilia which hurts both the wallet and the national pride.
So it is both - a need for serious computing and serious need to build new computers.
They can buy them from China just like the US does (Score:1, Insightful)
With most of the work done in developing motherboards, stamping silicon, and exporting the machines done in China, Russia can buy their computers from the same source as the US.
Plus, with the advances in malware, why own a computercomputer when you can pwn it?
I thought (Score:1, Funny)
I thought Russia led in distributed node supercomputers (aka botnets). Shows what I know.
Supercomputers for the sake of supercomputers? (Score:1, Insightful)
So what? Suddenly we have to start building supercomputers in Russia?
Lack of supercomputers means nobody needs them. That's an indication that Russia is falling behind in technology in general. You can't fix this just by building some supercomputers.
Something more fundamental must be done: fight corruption, establish rule of law, create infrustructure. Then the high-tech industry will emerge by itself. No need for the government to build supercomputers.
Re:Supercomputers for the sake of supercomputers? (Score:4, Funny)
Russian computers (Score:2)
Imagine a beawulf cluster of these?
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Dmitry Medvedev: "In Soviet Russia you make Beowulf Cluster."
Human minds don't compare to THAT human mind. (Score:3, Interesting)
The SR-71 blackbird was arguably the finest airplane ever built. Nothing before or since has ever matched it.
It was designed with nothing but a slide rule and paper.
Don't think these expensive toys are an adequate substitute for the human mind. Or for well trained engineers and mathemeticians.
Aw, c'mon. There are good reasons that the "stolen alien technology" meme has such staying power, and the SR-71 is one of the biggest. It was ridiculously far ahead of anything else we'd produced. Sure, it was the product of "the human mind", or at least A human mind, but I don't think lumping Kelly Johnson or Nikola Tesla or Leonardo da Vinci in with "the rest of humanity" is especially useful.
Whatever your level of skill and insight, though, supercomputing can act as a force multiplier for your brain.
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The SR-71 blackbird was arguably the finest airplane ever built. Nothing before or since has ever matched it.
It was designed with nothing but a slide rule and paper.
Nonsense. It was the fastest non-rocket airplane ever, and that was a remarkable achievement, but it came at a price. It was a one-trick pony, built so close to the limits of the technology of that era that basically, every flight needed to be treated like e.g. a space flight or a speed record. It needed astronaut-level pilots. It had spectacular failure modes that needed constant attention if you wanted to avoid them (compressor stall) and was fantastically expensive to run and maintain.
These days, an F-22
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The SR-71 blackbird was arguably the finest airplane ever built. Nothing before or since has ever matched it.
Nonsense. The SR-71 was really good at doing one thing - flying very high and very fast, in a straight line. How many Gs could it pull? Could it do a Cobra, or a J-turn? In terms of overall aerodynamic maneuvering, the F-15 or -16 or -22, or Su-27 or -35, are vastly superior to the SR-71. (Not that it isn't a massively cool plane, mind you, but "the finest plane ever built" carries with it lots of questions about criteria and standards.)
Appropriate Quote (Score:1, Funny)
"Mr. President, if I may speak freely, the Russkie talks big, but frankly, we think he's short of know how. I mean, you just can't expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys. And that's not meant as an insult, Mr. Ambassador, I mean, you take your average Russkie, we all know how much guts he's got. Hell, lookit look at all them them Nazis killed off and they still wouldn't quit."
Russia caught up with the US in 1984 (Score:4, Funny)
From chernenko@kremvax.UUCP Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984
Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC840302); site mcvax.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 4/1/84 (SU840401); site kremvax.UUCP
Path: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko
From: chernenko@kremvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.general,eunet.general,net.politics,eunet.politics
Subject: USSR on Usenet
Message-ID:
Date: Sun, 1-Apr-84 15:02:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: kremvax.0001
Posted: Sun Apr 1 15:02:52 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Apr-84 12:26:02 GMT
Organization: MIIA, Moscow
Lines: 41
Well, today, 840401, this is at last the Socialist Union of Soviet
Republics joining the Usenet network and saying hallo to everybody.
One reason for us to join this network has been to have a means of
having an open discussion forum with the American and European people
and making clear to them our strong efforts towards attaining peaceful
coexistence between the people of the Soviet Union and those of the
United States and Europe.
We have been informed that on this network many people have given strong
anti-Russian opinions, but we believe they have been misguided by their
leaders, especially the American administration, who is seeking for war
and domination of the world.
By well informing those people from our side we hope to have a possibility
to make clear to them our intentions and ideas.
Some of those in the Western world, who believe in the truth of what we
say have made possible our entry on this network; to them we are very
grateful. We hereby invite you to freely give your comments and opinions.
Here are the data for our backbone site:
Name: moskvax
Organization: Moscow Institute for International Affairs
Contact: K. Chernenko
Phone: +7 095 840401
Postal-Address: Moscow, Soviet Union
Electronic-Address: mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko
News: mcvax kremvax kgbvax
Mail: mcvax kremvax kgbvax
And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on
this network. So:
NA ZDAROVJE!
-- ...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko
K. Chernenko, Moscow, USSR
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Supercomps vs Botnets (Score:5, Insightful)
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I thought Russia was focusing on botnets. Most of these have a lot more processing power than the fastest supercomputers.
The expensive part of supercomputing is not the processors, it's having enough throughput on the backend to feed those CPUs.
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1 800-inch penis > 100 8-inch penises.
Not if you've got 100 women to pork in a limited amount of time, whose vaginas are only 8 inches deep.
Ah, wait, what? (Score:2)
476 out of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list were manufactured in the United States.
Yeah right! I don't think a single PC has been manufactured, assembled, and shipped from this country in which every component was dug out of the ground, refined, processed, manufactured, packaged, assembled, and distributed, from this country-- Not in a long time. That said, if Russia's so damned worried about our CPU designers, why not recruit a few? I know of at least one that quit the x86 development team from Intel muttering something about "not dealing with a unit of time smaller than a season" after
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Russia has solid CPU designs which are used (unsurprisingly) in military hardware and other special applications. For example, these beauties: http://www.mcst.ru/22-23.htm [www.mcst.ru] are nearly indestructible. So there's expertise.
However, so far Russia lacks expertise required to create fabs.
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Anything you can do with a blackboard and chalk, the Soviets were great at.
But they can't do anything that requires them to actually make something.
Graham said that this was ironic for a movement founded on materialism.
He had an entertaining story about how he went to GUM and asked the saleslady in the electronics department if he could buy a personal computer.
Sh
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Yes, sounds about right.
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I arrived in Russia post Soviet times, in the mid nineties. My Russian colleagues would tell me about the issues with technology. Russians are extremely competent engineers but they are quite conservative. Also their tec
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Money talks IT walks (Score:2)
He should know that all talents of Russia and brains are going to EU countries and US once they find an option to
AFAIK best fab they've got is old AMD (Score:1)
I recall couple years ago Russia bought entire decommissioned Dresden AMD fab. Good luck competing using manufacturing processes of yesteryear.
It seems like the best product of their nanotech push so far are midget kremlin rulers with their delusion of grandeur.
And yes, I used to know something about semiconductor industry in ex-USSR
The Correct Quote (Score:1)
"Therefore, comrade generals, our situation is very difficult," he said.
There, fixed that for ya Comrade Medvedev. Three cheers for cold-war style rhetoric!!
HAHAHA (Score:1)
If you get a counter hit, you can do massive damage to the capitalist regime. [youtube.com]
NOBODY IS SAFE FROM THE POWER OF SCIENCE!
Been playing way to much of it.
Buy SGI (Score:2)
Plus, the chance to screw up the SGI logo yet again.
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Essential to Russia's Economic Growth & Divers (Score:1)
For those of you that didn't RTFA, this is the bit that put Russia's problem into its proper perspective:
Contrary to popular misconception, Russia's economy doesn't just depend on oil and gas. It also depends on exporting weapons and other military equipment. For that country to
Uh- Hello? (Score:2)
Russia already has some of the largest and most powerful cluster computers in the world! All he needs to do is look to the Russian mafia and their collections of zombified computers that they control worldwide!
"In Russia, th3 p4wned kl0wd z0mb13s 0wnz3d U!"
Patriotism and Government, By Leo Tolstoy (Score:2)
I read it in Russian, so I do not know about the quality of this translation.
It sounded very convincing. What it has to do with supercomputers? Try to read the text. The answer is there.
Confused over here.... (Score:2)
What are "Supercomputer Lead Sparks"? How are they affected by RoHS? ...I think my parser failed on the sentence after that point.
Hard takeoff AI (Score:2)
WTF do they want this computing power for, I wonder
Politician as Computer Science Expert (Score:2)
... yeah, right.
Even a moderate load of smarts is enough to figure that it's cheaper to let someone else do the R&D the build a copy. Just look at pretty much all aircraft they've built and compare with ours.
Either this guy is ignorant to the point of incompetence, or he's just playing wag-the-weenie national ego games. They built stuff very much like ours when we were enemies. They're allies now.
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... yeah, right.
Even a moderate load of smarts is enough to figure that it's cheaper to let someone else do the R&D the build a copy. Just look at pretty much all aircraft they've built and compare with ours.
Uh... yeah. How did that turn out, again? I forget...
Security (Score:1)
I noticed that the speech was given at a Security Council meeting, yet nowhere in TFA did they mention anything about security. President Medvedev talked about building better airplanes but it seems he glossed over the security concerns.
It's an incredibly huge security issue for them. If our supercomputers spank their supercomputers, then we can decrypt their traffic but they cannot decrypt ours. They might as well just blog their state secrets in clear text.
Always consider what they're not saying.
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Competitve drive? (Score:1)
Does that install in the standard 5.25 bay?
Perhaps I'll get on myself when the prices come down and they stop "sparking".
Yet another time glorious government pushes "high (Score:1)
Then, Putin's government pushes "Nanotechnologies" thingy, which brings as many results as "glonass" push and becomes one of the popular jokes.
They also push for "brand new" and "deadly as hell" "Bulava" rocket, which keeps exploding "because of sabotage" and because, "when so many factories are involved in producing it, it's absolutelly impossible to control it's quality" (no
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