How do you all feel about this?

The US is usually on top, and likely eventually will be again, assuming the government continues to fund supercomputers. Is this something the government should be doing? Seems vaguely socialist...

6/17/2013 10:05:05 AM

the government funds supercomputers?

6/17/2013 10:40:42 AM

yeah but they're running pirated copies of windows 95 on it so who cares

6/17/2013 11:44:50 AM

^^
Yes...?

6/17/2013 12:52:34 PM

Chinese government is very rich. They have the power to utilize wealth of the whole nation and put into some big projects.

[Edited on June 17, 2013 at 12:55 PM. Reason : ;]

6/17/2013 12:54:54 PM

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"Seems vaguely socialist..."

we do a lot of things that are vaguely socialist. you'd be an idiot to let the fact that something could be described as possibly social (i.e. for the good of society) deter you from wanting to build huge computers; we very much rely on supercomputers these days.

now that that's out of the way, this is not unusual. we've been flipping back and forth w/ japan for the last decade, and china had the top machine as recently as june 2011 (at which point they were overtaken by japan, not the united states). as long as they're using intel chips though, it's not very concerning at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_500#Systems_ranked_.231_since_1993

6/18/2013 2:37:23 PM

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"^^ Yes...?"

aren't there waiting lists for time on these machines? why are they funded by the government?

6/18/2013 2:44:13 PM

^ huh? you apply for grants of computing time on those machines.

they are funded by the gov't b/c it's how we model nuclear explosions, predict the weather, simulate the universe, etc. but mainly model nuclear explosions.

6/18/2013 3:31:17 PM

There is a list of people who want to use them, you have to apply and wait. So why can't that pay for them?

6/18/2013 3:42:15 PM

i don't know if you're trying to get a privatization argument or something, but you'll get no such thing from me.

6/18/2013 5:46:35 PM

^^ there are tons of private compute clusters. And Unis do have to pay for gov. access.

It's just that the more capable clusters are owned by the gov. for primary usages other than research.

If you're asking why fundamental research problems aren't taken on more by the private sector, then it should be obvious why... Our socialized science system is one of the US's greatest strengths.

6/18/2013 6:29:14 PM

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"There is a list of people who want to use them, you have to apply and wait. So why can't that pay for them?"

Maybe because the US Government needs those supercomputers full time for maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal. We can't test those weapons live anymore, so we're pretty much running those supercomputers full time to model and ensure that our arsenal still works. I don't think that the Pentagon and DOE would want to wait in line for that or trust it to a third party. Same goes with weather modeling; I don't think the NWS wants to sit there and wait in a queue while modeling weather real time.

6/18/2013 6:33:16 PM

not a great example; the NWS wants a lot of things it doesn't get.

6/18/2013 7:15:26 PM

Yep, let's go further into debt to fund a nationalism-fueled pissing match.

Quote :

"Maybe because the US Government needs those supercomputers full time for maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal. We can't test those weapons live anymore, so we're pretty much running those supercomputers full time to model and ensure that our arsenal still works. I don't think that the Pentagon and DOE would want to wait in line for that or trust it to a third party. Same goes with weather modeling; I don't think the NWS wants to sit there and wait in a queue while modeling weather real time."

So what you're saying is that we could be letting those resources to go towards something productive, but instead we're spending them to maintain a stockpile of weapons that could wipe out the entire human race.

6/18/2013 7:51:37 PM

You could say that about a lot of other things, but I think supercomputers should probably be excluded from that argument.

[Edited on June 18, 2013 at 10:37 PM. Reason : ]

6/18/2013 10:37:40 PM

most of what you guys are saying in this thread is misinformed. the gov't DOES sell time on those computers. and they're used for far more than modeling nuclear explosions (heck one of nasa's computers has been at the top fairly recently, iirc). and these lists mean little. we've been trading back and forth with china every other year near the top for a while now. this list doesn't mean the fastest as much as it means the biggest. look at the list. we still dominate it (i haven't even looked at one in the past eyar or so, but i assume that's still true). we have plenty of capability in this country. it might not all be at one site.

from the group that does this stuff:

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"The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems, with 252 of the 500 systems (250 last time). The European share (112 systems – 105 last time) is still lower than the Asian share (119 systems – 123 last time)."

6/19/2013 7:38:08 AM

As I understand, the NSA has a computer in progress that is to be orders of magnitude beyond the next fastest.

6/19/2013 9:51:40 AM

Quote :

"So what you're saying is that we could be letting those resources to go towards something productive, but instead we're spending them to maintain a stockpile of weapons that could wipe out the entire human race."

Didn't say it was the best use of resources. Merely pointing out the fact as to why the top three American machines on that list happen to be DOE, and why that particular corner of the government doesn't have any intentions of letting go of their supercomputers anytime soon. I'm sure DOE also uses it for peaceful research, but nuclear weapons are a big reason why they have so many of those machines to begin with.

Quote :

"they're used for far more than modeling nuclear explosions (heck one of nasa's computers has been at the top fairly recently, iirc). "

I know, I know. However, given how the OP was phrased, I was merely pointing out one of the more obvious reasons as to why the government buys supercomputers. And again, why the first three machines are all DOE.

6/19/2013 11:43:44 AM

DOE just has a larger budget for supercomputers traditionally because of the nuclear non-proliferation stuff from the 90s.

6/19/2013 6:33:13 PM

it cost $104m to build jaguar and another $97m to turn it into titan. that's absolute pocket change. hush about taking on debt for computing.

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"As I understand, the NSA has a computer in progress that is to be orders of magnitude beyond the next fastest."

secret quantum computers don't count on the top500.

6/19/2013 7:46:55 PM