First Petaflop Supercomputer To Shut Down 84
An anonymous reader writes "In 2008 Roadrunner was the world's fastest supercomputer. Now that the first system to break the petaflop barrier has lost a step on today's leaders it will be shut down and dismantled. In its five years of operation, the Roadrunner was the 'workhorse' behind the National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing program, providing key computer simulations for the Stockpile Stewardship Program."
Stop writing "barrier". (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sound barrier" was and remains OK because there is a physical difference between flying slower than and faster than the speed of sound. But the word "barrier" is now (over)used to make things sound more dramatic. Raising a number from below to above some arbitrary (usually number base-dependent) threshold does not imply crossing a barrier, unless by barrier is meant "barrier to entry of another over-hyped tech piece".
No need to shut it down (Score:4, Insightful)
At today's prices, I'd have it farming Bitcoins.
Milestone (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No need to shut it down (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Top supercomputer is Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you somehow under the impression that these supercomputers are used to count nukes and keep track of their addresses?
Nuclear weapons have things like plutonium and uranium in them. The essential part of those is that they're radioactive. That means they decay. So yes, they do change over time. Since the US has agreed not to go firing the things off to see if they still work, the supercomputers are used to simulate the decay process and firing to see if they still work, what the yield is, and how long they're likely to keep working.
It's kind of embarrassing when the president says "turn them into a radioactive parking lot!" after North Korea nukes San Francisco, and the retaliatory strike is a bunch of duds.