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This is chump change, we should have invested $2.58 billion or more. China isn't taking half measures in their state's science and technology investments. They

by zt 9y ago

This is chump change, we should have invested $2.58 billion or more. China isn't taking half measures in their state's science and technology investments. They realize we're in a second cold war, just one where the two combatants have more economic interdependence. They are making investments like the ones that helped us win the last war.

MichaelBurge 9y ago
It's not like the DoE are the only ones with expensive computers: The NSA has their underground lair. There's a commercial need for expensive distributed processing now, with Google/AWS/Azure spending a lot on video cards. The ML craze may make government spending on supercomputers less important, especially if people prefer to distribute calculations on many interchangeable computers. I wouldn't mind a few NSF or DoD grants for novel computing architectures, but I'm not sure I buy that having massive supercomputers for economic forecasting is "strategically important for nations".
- convolvatron 9y ago
  these things get run in phases. phase 1 they insist on novel architectures, rethinking of basic premises, required involvement by academics. by the end of phase 3 when they actually procure machines its mostly 'just give me one of what you're already shipping, and it better run MPI well' doe exascale was supposed to be fundamentally different. because by the time you got there all the incremental improvements in power and latency management weren't nearly enough anymore...my guess is that they'll just make big gpu clusters and call it a day its probably not that much money in the scheme of things, but the sad (or good) depending on your perspective is that HPC got so far out of the mainstream that when corporations finally got around to worrying about scaling, they just did their own thing. so I guess they can thank darpa/doe for infiniband? not really? and they're still running fortran/mpi
nullnilvoid 9y ago
> They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then the U.S. government banned Intel from selling high end chips to China[1]. China had to create homemade chips for world's fastest supercomputer[2]. [1] http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/ http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chip... [2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secretive-super-fast-chip-powers-the-worlds-fastest-computer.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secre...
- myrandomcomment 9y ago
  I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in everything they do.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in the 1800s?
    - ori_b 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
      - alexeldeib 9y ago
        Adding onto this, consider that China was, for a relatively long period in its development, the dominant power in its interactions. Interactions with the colonial West in the 1800s were a dramatic departure from long term history in a number of ways. At the end of the 1800s, the Sino Japanese War was also a major defeat for the Chinese. From a certain perspective, the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal.
        dis-sys 9y ago
        "the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal" CCP has its own "Make China Great Again" thing, officially known as "The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-NATION/dp/7119086960 https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-NATI...
      - 9y ago
nitwit005 9y ago
Honestly, faster super computers aren't going to affect the balance of power. There is a ridiculous amount of computer power available already.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. Faster super computers allow you to do all kinds of things that would otherwise be quite hard. Think of supercomputers as weapons that you can fire very quietly, nobody even notices that you just tested some new (possibly nuclear) weapons system or that you designed some fighter jet, submarine or rocket. Super computers are a game changer, not having them is as much as ceding territory, having them but not knowing how to use them has a similar effect. Just like computers were a game changer in the previous war so super computers will be a game changer in the next, with the added caveat that you might not even notice when it starts or ends other than that you suddenly find out that your counterparty runs the show because they cracked the codes you thought were safe.
  - nitwit005 9y ago
    I didn't say they weren't useful, but, as noted, we already have tons of processing power. Diminishing returns kick in at some point with any sort of investment like this. Tossing a few more super computers at labs isn't going to shake the world. You can even get time on machines that aren't in the country. I'm sure Chinese experiments have run on US supercomputers at this point.

by zt 9y ago

MichaelBurge 9y ago

It's not like the DoE are the only ones with expensive computers: The NSA has their underground lair. There's a commercial need for expensive distributed processing now, with Google/AWS/Azure spending a lot on video cards. The ML craze may make government spending on supercomputers less important, especially if people prefer to distribute calculations on many interchangeable computers. I wouldn't mind a few NSF or DoD grants for novel computing architectures, but I'm not sure I buy that having massive supercomputers for economic forecasting is "strategically important for nations".

convolvatron 9y ago
these things get run in phases. phase 1 they insist on novel architectures, rethinking of basic premises, required involvement by academics. by the end of phase 3 when they actually procure machines its mostly 'just give me one of what you're already shipping, and it better run MPI well' doe exascale was supposed to be fundamentally different. because by the time you got there all the incremental improvements in power and latency management weren't nearly enough anymore...my guess is that they'll just make big gpu clusters and call it a day its probably not that much money in the scheme of things, but the sad (or good) depending on your perspective is that HPC got so far out of the mainstream that when corporations finally got around to worrying about scaling, they just did their own thing. so I guess they can thank darpa/doe for infiniband? not really? and they're still running fortran/mpi

nullnilvoid 9y ago

> They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then the U.S. government banned Intel from selling high end chips to China[1]. China had to create homemade chips for world's fastest supercomputer[2]. [1] http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/ http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chip... [2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secretive-super-fast-chip-powers-the-worlds-fastest-computer.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secre...

myrandomcomment 9y ago
I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in everything they do.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in the 1800s?
  - ori_b 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
    - alexeldeib 9y ago
      Adding onto this, consider that China was, for a relatively long period in its development, the dominant power in its interactions. Interactions with the colonial West in the 1800s were a dramatic departure from long term history in a number of ways. At the end of the 1800s, the Sino Japanese War was also a major defeat for the Chinese. From a certain perspective, the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal.
      - dis-sys 9y ago
        "the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal" CCP has its own "Make China Great Again" thing, officially known as "The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-NATION/dp/7119086960 https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-NATI...
    - 9y ago

nitwit005 9y ago

Honestly, faster super computers aren't going to affect the balance of power. There is a ridiculous amount of computer power available already.

jacquesm 9y ago
I'm not so sure about that. Faster super computers allow you to do all kinds of things that would otherwise be quite hard. Think of supercomputers as weapons that you can fire very quietly, nobody even notices that you just tested some new (possibly nuclear) weapons system or that you designed some fighter jet, submarine or rocket. Super computers are a game changer, not having them is as much as ceding territory, having them but not knowing how to use them has a similar effect. Just like computers were a game changer in the previous war so super computers will be a game changer in the next, with the added caveat that you might not even notice when it starts or ends other than that you suddenly find out that your counterparty runs the show because they cracked the codes you thought were safe.
- nitwit005 9y ago
  I didn't say they weren't useful, but, as noted, we already have tons of processing power. Diminishing returns kick in at some point with any sort of investment like this. Tossing a few more super computers at labs isn't going to shake the world. You can even get time on machines that aren't in the country. I'm sure Chinese experiments have run on US supercomputers at this point.