"Summit" Supercomputer to Propel US Back to Number 1 in Top 500 by 2018

[natr0n]

Looked up and they use basically water treatment equipment.Pretty crazy. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=supercomputer+pumps

 

[Prima.Vera]

Why are the governments invest in Quantum tech instead of those overly expensive and complicated x86 Servers??

 

[bug]

Why are the governments invest in Quantum tech instead of those overly expensive and complicated x86 Servers??

You mean why are they investing in proven technology instead of unproven? That's a tough one.
In reality money is going both ways using a ratio (more or less) determined by RoI.

 

[R-T-B]

That's what I said. It's easier to make news about "my PFLOPS is bigger than your PFLOPS". But the exciting part about supercomputers is elsewhere.

Ok... I guess I will entertain that, but you'll need to explain it.

Why are the governments invest in Quantum tech instead of those overly expensive and complicated x86 Servers??

This isn't an x86 server, but you probably mean conventional computers.

 

[bug]

Ok... I guess I will entertain that, but you'll need to explain it.

I mean, as exciting as the TOP500 may be, it's more interesting to look at what exactly those machines enable. Because it's not like they build them to run SuperPi.
Without the proper software, these things are as useful as those blocks of flats in North Korea or China that nobody lives in. Or that $170,000 machine in Big Bang theory that the guys used to make "a nice looking panini"

 

[Bones]

The entire Summit supercomputer will consume a space roughly the size of two basketball courts and require 136 miles of cabling - but even considering those massive engineering undertakings, it's on-schedule for deployment in 2018, and barring a top-secret supercomputer being in development by another country, it should propel the U.S. back into the supercomputing lead - at least for a time.

Would be cool to be the IT guy in charge of such a monster...... Would NOT be cool when you'd spot that little trickle of water coming from somewhere inside the thing...... And you're the guy that has to find and fix it.

They'll have to use cooling towers as rads for the setup, no doubt with the pumps to move the water through it all. Such a setup will require at least enough water volume to run a chiller for a very large building and have the appropiate setup to feed and maintain the water level in the system. The one I used to work with had 8 inch pipes for the chiller and cooling tower but even that by comparison probrably woudn't be enough for this monster setup. Could be the exact setup won't be along these lines but the sheer volume of water needed will be enormous in itself.

 

[Jism]

Looked up and they use basically water treatment equipment.Pretty crazy. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=supercomputer+pumps

Actually, most of that heat is hopefully being put to good use, and not wasted. In Holland there are several company's contributing their heat to houses. This means that the warm water is'nt warmed up by traditional gas but simply coming from company's who have alot of waste heat. All cooking and stuff is done by induction anyway.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or serious, if serious that'd be great. Even a handful of nodes could do certain tasks pretty quickly, assuming that it's feasible.

I was being serious. A great many owners of super computer array's rent out computing time to leverage operating costs.