←back to thread

El Capitan: New supercomputer is the fastest

(spectrum.ieee.org)
93 points rbanffy | 3 comments | 19 Nov 24 20:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
balia ◴[19 Nov 24 21:53 UTC] No.42188494[source]▶
Some may not want to hear this, but these “fastest supercomputer” list is now meaningless because all the Chinese labs have started obfuscating their progress.

A while ago there were a few labs in China in top 10 and they all attracted sanctions / bad attention. Now no Chinese lab report any data now

replies(3): >>42188546 #>>42188870 #>>42189307 #
leptons ◴[19 Nov 24 22:43 UTC] No.42188870[source]▶
I doubt the US Government is telling everyone about their fastest computer.
replies(2): >>42189701 #>>42189713 #
grapesodaaaaa ◴[20 Nov 24 00:47 UTC] No.42189701[source]▶
The DOE has entered the chat.

(after the nuclear test ban treaty, they run a LOT of simulations)

replies(1): >>42189717 #
1. buildbot ◴[20 Nov 24 00:50 UTC] No.42189717[source]▶
Isn't that the open secret for El Cap? "Classified workloads" aka weapons sims.
replies(2): >>42189759 #>>42196163 #
2. sliken ◴[20 Nov 24 00:56 UTC] No.42189759[source]▶
Not a secret, from IEEE:

The NNSA—which oversees Lawrence Livermore as well as Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories—plans to use El Capitan to “model and predict nuclear weapon performance, aging effects, and safety,”

3. leptons ◴[20 Nov 24 17:23 UTC] No.42196163[source]▶
There's no real secret about nuclear weapons simulations. Sure the software they use is protected and "secret", but the real secret computing facilities are likely there to break encryption and spy on everyone. Nuclear weapons simulations don't really give the US a tactical advantage, but breaking encryption does, and so that kind of compute power would be kept secret.