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© 2011 AFP'K Computer' smashes speed record
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© 2011 AFP
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NetNinja
Why don't you make it "self-aware" giving it an A.I program that can learn. Then we can use it help this planet. It may even be able to save us from ourselves in time.
MainframeSysop
Can someone say "SkyNet" ?
Congratulations on breaking your own record :)
SamuraiBlue
I believe the present supercomputer's computational speed is equivalent to a slug. Still quite a way to go for an electronic overlord to appear.
miyazawa3
Congratulations ! Sugooiii !
jonobugs
I wonder how long it will take for the "average" desktop to attain those types of speeds? Maybe in 10-15 years from now?
アメリ フセイン
@ jonobugs
I don't know about the average desktop, but the iPad 2 is equivalent to the Cray 2 supercomputer from 1985. The typical desktop is many times more powerful than the iPad.
Zambezi Dan
Just imagine where we'd be now, if Alan Turing (the british WWII hero code-breaker, who did so much to help the Allies shorten the war against Germany & Japan, and who invented the electronic computer) hadn't been driven to suicide as a young man by the british authorities, just because he was gay, and we could have had his genius contribution to computer development for many decades more?
Instead of being honored for the enormous contribution he made to saving his nation, and thousands and thousands of lives on all sides by helping end that awful conflict, he was ruthlessly persecuted an forced into barbaric drug treatments to "cure" his gayness, under threat of imprisonment for his "crimes".
So agonized was his existence made, that took his own life by biting an apple laced with cyanide, which I believe was the inspiration for the Apple corporation logo.
A terrible, terrible tragedy and injustice.
gogogo
Does it play Doom?
kaminarioyaji
We humans are amazing - supercomputers, nanotechnology, gene mapping, space travel.
Now, if we could just build ONE road or pavement that drained properly and didn't have puddles...
CrazyJoe
The "K" stands for 京 (kei) meaning ten quadrillion.
wtfjapan
Thats until Cray Jaguar upgrades there system next year, to be called the Titan well over 20petaflops, funny how the K uses Intel and Nvidia processors, so the K cant really be called a Japanese supercomputer can it?
Todd Hathaway
That A.I. technology has already been developed, deployed, and remains highly classified...
TakahiroDomingo
wish i had access to such a monster. once you have such a powerful "brain", you need to feed it with a good "education" (solve really hard problems). i am truly very happy for japan. but please, try to protect such technology from the chinese hackers
Ah_so
It may be fast, but like all computers, it would be reduced to a crawl by installing McAfee Security Center.
nath
From what we've been told repeatedly over the years, these huge supercomputers are used mainly for two things: weather forecasting and simulation of nuclear explosions. Have weather forecasts gotten that much better? Is there really that much left unknown about nuclear explosions?
How about taking care of some other things instead? Maybe a system of traffic lights that's truly intelligent. Or a house that listens when I tell it to turn off a light or lock the front door. How about integrating GPS, a map database and a fuel totalizer in my car so it can tell me, "Refuel at one of these three gas stations or you will run out of gas."
Every one of these things is eminently possible with current technology. While I appreciate the unwavering accuracy of current weather forecasts (!), I'd much rather see real problems solved with real-world computing power than another few petaflops tacked on to some machine that means little to anyone other than the people who work on it.
zurcronium
Useless government waste. The new Cray computer is funded by US government as well. This is about useless competition and massive misuse of tax payer funds.
Elbuda Mexicano
I am so excited about this super fast computer!!!! Just think how fast all those videos will download!!
choiwaruoyaji
What's wrong with being second fastest?
oberst
so we have this super super fast computer........................... How about put it to good use to figure out all the possible scenerio on various ways to SAFELY dispose of all the radioactive wastes ?
or we can use it to design a perfect baby sitting, dancing robot.
MapleG
Maybe they could give it some real work..something like fixing TEPSCO and their , umm, handling of things.
ebisen
zurcronium, if you ever get the cancer,I suppose you will not take any modern medicine, as most of it was developed with the help of "useless" supercomputers.
LFRAgain
choiwaruoyaji,
Nice reference to Ms. Renhou Murata's silliness a few years back. ;-)
Super computers lead to countless advances, including faster and more accurate gene sequencing, faster chemical analysis in pharmaceutical R&D, and faster mapping of the cosmos, which will help yield data like when and if we're going to get clobbered by an asteroid at some point in the future.
Hooray for Riken and Fujitsu for continuing to push the boundaries of this crucial science.
JeffLee
RIKEN is entirely funded by us taxpayers. These one-off feats are a national vanity project, in other words a waste of money. As pointed out, supercomputers are mainly used for nuclear explosions, weather forecasting and aeronautics. Japan has little use for them. If the private sector wants to development then, fine.
globalwatcher
Congratulations! I guess IBM Mr. Simpson is no longer the fastest computer in the world.
LFRAgain
Japan has little use for better tools to help with weather forcasting or aeronautics? How, exactly, do you come to this conclusion?
JeffLee
How, exactly, do you come to this conclusion?
Japan doesn't have a large aeronautics industry, like Europe or the US. And an incremental improvement in weather forecasting isn't worth the trillions of yen of OUR money the heavily indebted government is willing to throw at these vanity projects.
If Fujitsu wants a more powerful computer, then let its stakeholders fund it. Not us. If Japanese researchers want more computing power, then they can buy the computers from overseas. Japan runs huge balance of trade surpluses, but huge fiscal deficits. Given these circumstances, taxpayer funding makes no sense.
LFRAgain
JeffLee,
Some of the biggest "vanity projects" over the last half-century have yielded an almost endless list of benefits to consumers and society overall. The U.S. space program and the Cold War are two outstanding examples.
MIR scanners, microwave ovens, Saran Wrap, anything and everything having to do with the computer revolution -- all thanks to state-funded vanity projects. Each of these projects, while focused on a single goal, in this case a computer that's faster than any other on the planet, birth off countless other technologies and applications that prompt new industries, subsequently bolstering economies.
Fujitsu can license the rights for multiple levels of the tech involved in its super computer program to a variety of companies and governments around the world, generating income that Fujitsu can in turn use to create more jobs, which in turn benefits the Japanese economy, and thus society as a whole.
アメリ フセイン
@JeffLee The supercomputer here @ University of Tsukuba is built by Appro using Intel and nVidia hardware. Much more cost competitive than Fujitsu's and has better dev tools, or so I've heard. I have no access to it, but I do have access to the servers and the majority run on Intel and nVidia hardware.
JeffLee
@LFRAgain
the computer revolution...all thanks to state-funded vanity projects
You're absolutely wrong. The first personal computer (Apple) computer was made in a suburban garage. The first Dell computers were sold out of the trunk of Michael Dell's car. Microsoft/Apple were private startups that were launched with zero government funding. Silicon Valley became into being not because bureaucrats instructed it to exist, but through the innovation and energy of individuals with private capital.
By contrast, RIKEN is 100% government funded, and it's a government that's sinking in the world's highest level of debt. Japan faces the prospect of not being able to properly fund health care and social security in the future, in part because so much of our money is funneled to large (wealthy) corporations like Fujitsu.
Ameri Fusein; That's certainly good news, and is proof that RIKEN's supercomputer project is a waste of resources and time.
アメリ フセイン
@JeffLee There is more to it than just filling Fujitsu's pockets. National pride plays a huge role and at a time like this, Japan needs anything to make it feel proud. You can go up to almost any Japanese you find and ask them if they've heard of the K supercomputer and they will answer with excitement 'Yes'. The other reason, Fujitsu now is the only left Japanese processor maker that can make chips competitive in performance to those made by American companies. Fujitsu creates engineering jobs in Japan and when it comes to national pride you have to go with chips made by a Japanese firm. It is not the most cost competitive option, but the jobs created by this project in Japan are worth it. Both NEC and Hitachi withdrew from the project citing costs, the Japanese government had to pay to keep Fujitsu involved. It is a big happy feel good project that will also create jobs. It is not sustainable, but for a while everyone is happy.
LFRAgain
JeffLee,
On the contrary. The computer revolution came along a lot sooner than the 1976 Apple I. The first working integrated circuit, or microchip, was created by Jack Kilby in 1958 and perfected during his time at Texas Instruments which had been under U.S. government contract since at least 1942 to produce defense-related technologies. Money slotted for the Apollo Progam paid in part for that integrated circuit. Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell weren't responsible for the guts that later made their contributions to the Computer Age work. U.S. taxpayers were.
motytrah
IBM and Cray are in the process of building computers that will be twice as fast as this one. The Cray Line up is very interesting as the design is based on AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, and has a theoretical max 5 times faster than this computer. Of course the proof will be in actually delivering the final product. Fact is most of these computers are bought by gov't. So it's a pretty limited market.
TumbleDry
wtfjapan: Seems you are not really up to date... Not Intel or NVidia but SPARC64 VIIIfx, developed by Fujitsu.
アメリ フセイン
@ TumbleDry The SPARC64 VIIIfx is among the best processors in terms of raw performance.
lrodriguezsosa
@JeffLee
Apple didn't make the first personal computer.