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Supercomputing

Are the World's Most Powerful Supercomputers Operating In Secret? (msn.com) 42

Posted by EditorDavid from the super-secrets dept.
"A new supercomputer called Frontier has been widely touted as the world's first exascale machine — but was it really?"

That's the question that long-time Slashdot reader MattSparkes explores in a new article at New Scientist... Although Frontier, which was built by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, topped what is generally seen as the definitive list of supercomputers, others may already have achieved the milestone in secret....

The definitive list of supercomputers is the Top500, which is based on a single measurement: how fast a machine can solve vast numbers of equations by running software called the LINPACK benchmark. This gives a value in float-point operations per second, or FLOPS. But even Jack Dongarra at Top500 admits that not all supercomputers are listed, and will only feature if its owner runs the benchmark and submits a result. "If they don't send it in it doesn't get entered," he says. "I can't force them."

Some owners prefer not to release a benchmark figure, or even publicly reveal a machine's existence. Simon McIntosh-Smith at the University of Bristol, UK points out that not only do intelligence agencies and certain companies have an incentive to keep their machines secret, but some purely academic machines like Blue Waters, operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are also just never entered.... Dongarra says that the consensus among supercomputer experts is that China has had at least two exascale machines running since 2021, known as OceanLight and Tianhe-3, and is working on an even larger third called Sugon. Scientific papers on unconnected research have revealed evidence of these machines when describing calculations carried out on them.

McIntosh-Smith also believes that intelligence agencies would rank well, if allowed. "Certainly in the [US], some of the security forces have things that would put them at the top," he says. "There are definitely groups who obviously wouldn't want this on the list."
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Are the World's Most Powerful Supercomputers Operating In Secret? More

Are the World's Most Powerful Supercomputers Operating In Secret?

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  • The fastest person in the world is simply the fastest person who can training and time and air fare to competition. There are likely many more that are faster.

    • No. There is only a small pool of candidates for "fastest person" or "best" in any category. Nor is the extra stuff simple because all the contributing factors can be combined in many ways. In the case of the most powerful supercomputers, it's quite difficult to even compare the candidates in meaningful ways.

      I think the underlying problem that is in a sense destroying each of us is the scale of competition. Used to be relatively easy to be "best" in some categories, at least as regards all the people you kn

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fermion ( 181285 )
        The actual point is if you care to compete. The fastest runner or the fastest computer is interesting as it sets a bench match for improvement, if that is a goal. If arbitrary competition is not a goal, if winning in a category is not going to achieve and tangible benefit, then it is a waste of time to compete. If I am a really fast runner, and it allows me success, why do I care if someone is faster. It is only for the privileged. If my computer does what I need it to do, and I donâ(TM)t care if it is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          I can't recall which of the recent malignant AI books I should cite, but the the short response is that each of the secret AIs (of the worst sort) may have the primary mission of kneecapping the other sides' AIs.

    • I was more along the lines of, "In other News, Water is Wet" [memegenerator.net]

    • To be more precise, there have probably been many people who have beaten the world record in isolated or untimed incidents. But on average, the people with the resources to fly to competitions also have the resources to train and be properly nourished and will be faster over many trials.

    • There are likely many more that are faster.

      No there's not. The only point of being faster is to be so publicly racing against others. There's not a hidden tribe of Africans being hunted by cheetahs that have a different primary reason for being fast for survival. Being a fast runner is not a human benchmark for some other use. All other uses have been supplanted by machines.

      Computers on the other hand don't exist just to be quick. They exist to do work. Benchmarking them on speed is completely secondary to their purpose of being.

      • Work like break cryptography. U know the type of cryptography that the fastest computers on the list canâ(TM)t break, but are no doubt being done by faster computers.
  • Perhaps the Chinese researchers simply couldn't justify to the government why they should spend any time trying to show off vs doing proper work.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      When you set it up you have to shake it out. See if it works. Why not then?
      I used to check all that stuff out. How is my disk access? How are the CPUs working? Does threading work? For web sites I used to have a script called torture. What about the network? What about shared memory and semaphores? My analysis used to take about 1/2 hour though I often had over a week to do it. I used to spot a lot of problems. Usually in the disk fabric. Sometimes network. I had it so it would create a nice report suitable

  • The easiest way to hide a secret capability is usually in the open on the hardware everybody knows about. Some black team designs a bit of extra capability that gets slid into a slot left for it by a plant on the main team. I'd bet most government owned supercomputers and some of the allegedly fully private ones have capabilities added in this fashion. It might just be an ability to crank up the cooling and run a bit hotter, whole new chips relabeled and swapped out with the ones that were planned to be the

  • Creepier title (Score:3)

    by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @09:31PM (#62612526)
    "Are the World's Most Powerful Supercomputers Cooperating in Secret"
  • Think of it like a megaphone. If what you're saying into it doesn't make sense, you won't keep that megaphone for very long. You'll neglect it and others will fight it with increasing success.

    China not only has nothing to say, it doesn't even trust its own ability to find something. It's too afraid of being lured into our ideas to find any of its own, losing no matter which way the tide breaks.
  • Of course most of them operate in secret, only those created by companies for marketing or to big note their research publish details. Most are created to do actual work to beat competitors or do work for governments not score useless points in dick waving contests.

  • The only evidence in the article is Sugon computer whose earlier version was 93 petaflops. The new one has 4 times more core and upgraded processor (no mention of upgraded core). Assuming new core 40% faster (mostly less), this translates to 600 petaflops which would rank it at number 2. All others are simply speculation with zero evidence, not even a reference.

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