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Sequoia, a world-class IBM BlueGene/Q computer sited at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration, is exploring a broad range of science to shakeout the machine and fully develop the capabilities the system will require to fulfill its national security missions. Located in Livermore's TSF computing facility, Sequoia is a resource used by researchers at the three nuclear weapons labs -- Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national labs. Sequoia was ranked No. 1 on the industry-standard Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers in June, 2012. The system also was No. 1 on the Green 500, as the world's most energy efficient computer, and No. 1 on the Graph 500, a measure of the ability to solve big data problems -- finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Verónica Vergara Larrea isn’t new to troubleshooting, but a task as big as a supercomputer takes a plan and a team. Her team just completed acceptance of approximately 25 percent of the final system.
The Faces of Summit series shares stories of people working to stand up America’s next top supercomputer for open science, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit. The next-generation machine is scheduled to come on line in 2018.
Read more: www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/01/17/faces-of-summit-putting-the-...
Image credit: Jason Richards/ORNL
IBM tape drive used for outputting data in the computer center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 1966
2000 - The world celebrates the turn of the millenium | The dot-com bubble bursts | Concorde crashes in France, killing 113 | Personal home computers break the 1Ghz barrier | Sydney hosts the Olympic Games
2001 - George Bush is sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States | A devastating terrorist attack leaves nearly 3,000 dead in America | The world's first space tourist | Wikipedia is launched
2002 - Apple introduces the iMac G4 | Quaoar is discovered | The deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia disaster | The invasion of Iraq | The Human Genome Project is completed | Record heatwaves kill tens of thousands in Europe | MySpace is launched
2004 - George Bush is re-elected | Athens hosts the Olympic Games | Train bombings in Madrid kill nearly 200 people | Hubble Ultra Deep Field | Mars Exploration Rovers | The first privately funded human spaceflight | Facebook is launched | World's first 1Gb SD card | London's skyline gets a new landmark | Asia gets a new tallest building | Indian Ocean earthquake leaves a quarter of a million dead
2005 - Suicide bombers in London kill 56 people, injure 700 others | Hurricane Katrina floods New Orleans | Huygens probe reveals images of Titan's surface | YouTube is launched | Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany
2006 - North Korea conducts its first nuclear test | West African black rhinos are declared extinct | Pluto is demoted to "dwarf planet" status | Saddam Hussein is executed
2007 - Global economic downturn | Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair as Prime Minister of Great Britain | Nicolas Sarkozy is elected President of the French Republic | Arctic sea ice hits a record low | Apple debuts the iPhone | Amazon releases the Kindle | Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Pakistan
2008 - Oil prices hit a record high of $147/barrel | Internet continues to boom | Scientists extract images directly from the brain | Artificial DNA | Breakthrough in wireless energy transfer | Major advances in CGI | Video adverts on London's tube | Beijing hosts the Olympic games
2009 - Major breakthrough in cancer research | Scientists engineer new plastics without use of fossil fuels | Mouse genome is fully sequenced | Water is discovered on the Moon | Mercury is 98% mapped | A shift towards portable (and ultra-portable) PCs | Mind control headsets available for gamers | The tallest man-made structure in history is completed | Kepler searches for Earth-like planets | 3D scanning enters the consumer market | Africa's population tops one billion
2010 - Scientists create synthetic life | Iran is on the brink of revolution | China becomes the largest energy consumer in the world | Localised renewable energy is becoming affordable | Apple debuts the iPad | Augmented Reality is entering the mainstream | Macular degeneration is curable | Speech-to-speech translation is common in mobile phones | Major breakthrough in robotics |BP oil spill environmental disaster
2011-2014 - British forces withdraw from Afghanistan
2011 - The Space Shuttle fleet is retired | The web has a greater reach than television | Multi-touch surface computing is available to the mass market | The first open petaflop supercomputer comes online | Batteries that charge in seconds | 22 nanometre chips are in mass production | USB 3.0 is available | Consumer-level robotics are booming | Completion of the ISS | World's first commercial spaceport | China's Three Gorges Dam is fully operational
2012 - Economic growth remains sluggish in many markets | London hosts the Olympic Games |
OLED screens are becoming widespread | Brain-computer interfaces allowing the paralysed to walk again | A cure for baldness | World's first 1-GW offshore wind farm | Mars Science Laboratory explores the Red Planet | Barack Obama is re-elected
2013 - Iran carries out its first nuclear test | Solar flares are disrupting the Earth's magnetosphere |
3D technologies are widespread | India launches its second lunar exploration mission
2014 - The James Webb telescope is launched | Personalised DNA sequencing for less than $100 | Internet "lifecasting" enters the mainstream | 16nm chips are in mass production | Terabyte SD cards are available | Robotic pack mules are entering military service | MAVEN probe arrives at Mars | The Rosetta probe deploys its lander on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko | Most telephone calls are made via the Internet now | Brazil hosts the FIFA World Cup
2015-2019 - Virtual Reality makes a comeback
2015 - Worldwide PC use reaches 2bn | Nanotech water filters are spreading to many developing countries | The first climate change refugees | 3D printing enters the consumer market | New Horizons probe arrives at Pluto | Dawn probe arrives at Ceres | Voyager I enters the heliopause
2016 - The US military withdraws its last remaining troops from Afghanistan | US vehicles are becoming more fuel-efficient | Laser guns are in naval use | Holographic versatile disc (HVD) replaces Blu-Ray | Biocameras matching human eye resolution | Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympic Games
2017 - Total solar eclipse in the USA | Crossrail opens in London | Electronic paper is widespread | Portable medical lasers that seal wounds | Teleportation of simple molecules
2018 - The European Extremely Large Telescope is operational | Ubiquitous internet nodes connect appliances, vehicles, etc. | Robot insect spies are in military use | Consumer devices with 100 Gbit/s transfer speeds | Anti-fat drug is available | The new World Trade Center is complete
2019 - ITER experimental fusion reactor is switched on | Computers break the exaflop barrier | Bionic eyes are commercially available | Automated freight transport | The Aral Sea disappears from the map | Global oil demand exceeds 100 million barrels per day
2020-2035 - World energy crisis
2020 - Internet use reaches 5 billion worldwide | Texting by thinking | Complete organ replacements grown from stem cells | Holographic TV is mainstream | Sweden becomes the first oil-free country |
Glacier National Park and other regions are becoming ice-free | Completion of the Square Kilometre Array | Wholly lifelike CGI
2021 - "Thoughtcrime" is becoming a reality | Fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft | Telecommuting is a standard flexible work option | Traditional microchips are reaching the limits of miniaturisation | Water crisis in southwest USA
2022 - Nanotech clothing enters the mass market | Tooth regeneration is transforming dental care | Piezoelectric nanowires are appearing in high-end products | Deafness is curable
2023 - Laser-driven fusion energy makes progress | Borneo’s rainforests have been wiped from the map | Gorillas are extinct in Central Africa | Turkey becomes self-sufficient in energy production
2024 - The biggest refugee crisis in world history | African elephants are on the brink of extinction | Petabyte storage devices are available
2025 - Human brain simulations are becoming possible | Medical nanobots are becoming available | China's economy continues to boom | Vertical farms are appearing in many cities | High-speed rail networks are being expanded in many countries | Africa and the Middle East are linked by a transcontinental bridge | Progress with longevity extension | Stress and anxiety are reaching crisis levels | Contact with the Voyager probes is lost
2026 - Rising sea levels are wreaking havoc on the Maldives | The United States of Africa is established
2027 - BRICs overtake the G7 nations | Carbon sequestration is underway in many nations
2028 - Printed electronics are ubiquitous | UK population reaches 70m | Manned fighter planes are being phased out and replaced with UAVs | Amputees can regrow lost limbs
2029 - Human-like AI is becoming a reality | Heavy automation of supermarkets and retail environments | Intelligent advertising | Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) | Lake Chad disappears from the map
2030 - Global population is reaching crisis point | AI is widespread | USA is declining as a world power | AIDS, cancer and a plethora of other degenerative diseases are curable | India becomes the most populous country in the world | Full weather modeling is perfected | Emerging job titles of today
2031 – Web 4.0 is transforming the Internet landscape | Married couples are a minority
2032 - Manned mission to Mars | 4th generation nuclear power | Terabit internet speeds are commonplace
2033 - Hypersonic airliners are entering service | Holographic wall screens | IT's share of the US economy reaches 15% | Lung disease in China has killed over 80 million by now
2034 - Exabyte storage devices are available
2035 - Turmoil in the Middle East | The Arctic is becoming ice-free during summer | Self-driving vehicles are widespread | Holographic recreations of dead people | Robots are dominating the battlefield | Artificially-grown meat is available to consumers
2036 - Bionic eyes that surpass human vision
2037 - Quantum computers are becoming available
2038 - Teleportation of complex organic molecules | The FIFA World Cup trophy is replaced
2039 - Full immersion virtual reality | Universal translators are ubiquitous | Nanotech fabrics are ubiquitous | Australia's national symbol, the Koala bear, faces extinction | US population reaches 400m
2040 - Clean energy is widespread | Fusion power is nearing commercial availability | "Energy islands" are appearing in many coastal regions | Thought transfer is dominating personal communications worldwide | Claytronics are revolutionising the consumer market | Breakthroughs in carbon nanotube production | World population reaches 8.5 bn | Water crisis in Europe
2042 - Nanotech robot swarms are the latest in military hi-tech | Manned missions to Phobos and Deimos | Floating hotels in the sky are heralding a new era in luxury transport
2044 - The last veterans of WW2 are passing away
2045 - Humans are becoming intimately merged with machines | Global food and water shortages |
Gulf Coast cities are being abandoned due to super hurricanes
2045-2049 - China transitions towards a democracy | Major extinctions of animal and plant life
2048 - The near-Earth asteroid 2007 VK184 makes a close pass
2049 - Robots are a common feature of homes and workplaces |
2050 - The World in 2050 | 45% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed | Wildfires have tripled in some regions; air quality and visibility is declining | Smaller, faster, hi-tech automobiles | Continent-wide "supergrids" provide much of the world's energy needs | One in five Europeans is a Muslim
2052 - Hyper-fast crime scene analysis
2053 - Moore's Law reaches stunning new levels | Genetically engineered "designer babies" for the rich
2055 - Traditional media have fragmented and diversified | Global population plateaus at 9 billion
2056 - Fully synthetic humans are becoming technically feasible
2057 - Computers reach another milestone | Handheld MRI scanners
2058 - Construction of a radio telescope on the Moon
2059 - Mars population reaches 100
2060 - Global mass migrations of refugees | Flood barriers erected in New York | Global extinction rates are peaking | An ageing population | Mining operations on the Moon
2061 - Halley's Comet returns | UK population reaches 80 million
2062 - Nanofabricators enter the consumer market
2064 - IT's share of the US economy reaches 20%
2065 - Longevity treatments that can halt aging | Invisibility suits are in military use | Insurance crisis
2067 - Male and female salaries are reaching parity
2068 - A major landmark in the world of athletics
2069 - 100th anniversary of Apollo 11 | US population reaches half a billion
2070 - Large-scale evacuations are underway in many coastal cities | Fusion power is widespread | Fully automated homes | Expansion of Moon bases
2072 - Picotechnology is becoming practical
2074 - The Green Wall of China is completed
2075 - The ozone layer has fully recovered | London and other major cities are being flooded
2076 - Unmanned probes to Sedna
2079 - Practical flying cars are entering the consumer market | Total solar eclipse in New York
2080 - Some humans are more non-biological than biological | Construction of a transatlantic tunnel | Polar bears face extinction | One in five lizard species are extinct | Deadly heatwaves plague Europe; traditional agriculture is decimated
2082 - The USA cedes territory to Mexico
2083 - Hyper-intelligent computers
2084 - Androids are entering law enforcement
2085 - Global currency | Macro-scale teleportation is achieved
2085-2089 - Manned exploration of the Jovian system
2090 - Traditional religions are fading from European culture
2092 - West Antarctica is among the fastest growing areas in the world
2095 - Many of the world's languages are no longer in use | Manned exploration of the Saturnian system
2099 - Sea levels are wreaking havoc around the world | 83% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost
2100 - Much of the world is controlled by AI now | World GDP per capita exceeds US$200,000 | Nomadic floating cities are roaming the oceans | The chemistry of Earth's oceans has been radically altered | Emperor Penguins face extinction
2110 - Terraforming of Mars is underway | Force fields are in military use | Femtoengineering is practical | Man-made control of earthquakes and tsunamis | Our solar system is passing through a million degree cloud of gas
2120 - Mind uploading enters mainstream society | The International Space Elevator is operational
2130 - Large-scale civilian settlement of the Moon is underway
2140 - Teleportation of large stationary objects is possible
2150 - Interstellar travel is becoming possible | Androids physically indistinguishable from real humans | Hi-tech, automated cities
2151 - Total solar eclipse in London
2155 - Universal education in Africa
2160 - The world's first bicentenarians
2170 - The first kilometre-sized space station is complete
2180 - Antimatter power plants are coming online | Asteroid terrorism
2190 - Matter replication is available for the home | Global languages are becoming few in number now; education has been vastly accelerated | The West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to disintegrate
2200 - The World in 2200 | Poverty, hunger and disease are being eradicated worldwide
2210 - A global rewilding effort is underway
2220 - Mind uploading is available to a multitude of platforms | The Light Year Array is operational
2230 - Antimatter-fueled starships
2240 - Christianity is fading from American culture
2250 - Humanity is becoming a Type 1 civilisation on the Kardashev scale
2260 - Accelerated development of the Solar System
2280 - Microbial life is confirmed on an exoplanet
14/02/2022. Edinburgh , United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits The University of Edinburgh to see the UK’s National Supercomputer, met by Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
14/02/2022. Edinburgh , United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits The University of Edinburgh to see the UK’s National Supercomputer, met by Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
Verónica Vergara Larrea isn’t new to troubleshooting, but a task as big as a supercomputer takes a plan and a team. Her team just completed acceptance of approximately 25 percent of the final system.
The Faces of Summit series shares stories of people working to stand up America’s next top supercomputer for open science, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit. The next-generation machine is scheduled to come on line in 2018.
Read more: www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/01/17/faces-of-summit-putting-the-...
Image credit: Jason Richards/ORNL
Dutch national supercomputer Huygens, an IBM pSeries 575 clustered SMP system.
The IBM system will be replaced by a new class of supercomputer, "Cartesius", provided and built by Bull.
About four months ago, the room was still clean and free of dust, now it has been contaminated, soiled and abused by construction workers ("bouwvarkens").
Read more about Huygens at Wikipedia and Stichting Nationale Computerfaciliteiten.
The Apple IIc, the fourth model in the Apple II series of personal computers, was Apple Computer’s first endeavor to produce a portable computer. The end result was a luggable 7.5 lb (3.4 kg) notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could easily be transported from place to place.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIc
Retrocomputing (a portmanteau of retro and computing) is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons. However some do make use of it.[1] Retrocomputing often gets its start when a computer user realizes that expensive fantasy systems like IBM Mainframes, DEC Superminis, SGI workstations and Cray Supercomputers have become affordable on the used computer market, usually in a relatively short time after the computers' era of use.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocomputing
Con il termine retrocomputing si indica una attività di "archeologia informatica" che consiste nel reperire, specialmente a costi minimi, computer di vecchie generazioni, che hanno rappresentato fasi importanti dell'evoluzione tecnologica, ripararli se sono danneggiati, metterli nuovamente in funzione e preservarli.
All ship traffic was stopped due to the annual test closing of the storm surge barriers in the New Waterway. So for a few hours the gateway to Rotterdam was closed for all ships.
The Maeslantkering is a storm surge barrier on the Nieuwe Waterweg, in South Holland, Netherlands. Controlled by a supercomputer, it automatically closes when Rotterdam is threatened by floods. Part of the Delta Works, it is one of largest moving structures on Earth, rivalling the Green Bank Telescope in the United States and the Bagger 288 excavator in Germany.
Another move by the U.S. is the passing of the CHIPS Act in an attempt to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the country. I highly doubt we can succeed on that. The $1.7 million price tag for a single small public toilet in San Francisco clearly shows the high costs and inefficiency on doing just about anything in the U.S.
Besides, it's estimated that we will need 50,000 new engineers in the next 5 years in order to fill our reshoring needs. One university, Perdue, is supposed to increase their engineering graduates from 150 per year to 1,000 per year. As shown in the just released National Education Assessment Report, students math score declined in all 50 states. Where will we find these 50,000 new engineers? Can we really import so many of them?
finance.yahoo.com/news/san-francisco-building-single-publ...
San Francisco building single public toilet that will cost $1.7 million and won't be completed until 2025
finance.yahoo.com/news/why-us-tech-controls-on-china-coul...
Why US tech controls on China could end up hurting American semiconductors
When the US first banned sales of certain tech products to Chinese tech firm Huawei three years ago, it crippled a once-proud national champion and sent ripples across the US semiconductor industry. In the quarters following that export ban in May 2019, top American chipmakers reported a median revenue decline of 4% to 9%.
The Biden administration’s latest tech controls threaten to accelerate those losses, throwing the global semiconductor sector into disarray. And Chinese companies targeted by the new regulations won’t be the only ones feeling the pain.
“If China really wants to be as aggressive as the US and retaliate, there could be a lot of impact for other companies in the US,” said Edith Yeung, Race Capital General Partner, in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “This is beyond impact on revenue for Intel (INTC) or Qualcomm (QCOM) or NVIDIA (NVDA).”
The US has long been a global leader in semiconductors, commanding roughly 45% to 50% market share. However, that leadership has been built on global demand for its products, with China consuming roughly 75% of semiconductors sold globally.
Chinese device makers alone accounted for roughly a quarter of global semiconductor demand in 2018, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
'More than just a preventative tool'
That innovation cycle is at risk of being picked apart, with the Biden administration’s sweeping tech controls, aimed at freezing China’s semiconductor development and dramatically limiting critical technology exports from the US
“Technology export controls can be more than just a preventative tool,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, ahead of the administration’s announcements. “If implemented in a way that is robust, durable, and comprehensive, they can be a new strategic asset in the US and allied toolkit to impose costs on adversaries, and even over time degrade their battlefield capabilities.”
'A sea change' in policy
Specifically, the new measures block sales of semiconductors critical to the development of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, and other advanced technologies, unless companies receive exemptions. It also expands an existing ban to sell advanced chip-making equipment to Chinese firms.
In a broad escalation, the Biden administration’s actions also restrict US firms and citizens, including permanent residents, from supporting China’s development of advanced chips.
The restrictions announced earlier this month have already created a chilling effect.
At least 43 senior executives are American citizens working with 16 publicly listed Chinese semiconductor companies, according to the Wall Street Journal. Western firms like Dutch equipment maker ASML Holding NV have suspended American employees from working as a precaution, while they seek further clarity. What's more, Apple temporarily halted plans to use memory chips from China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. in products, according to Nikkei Asia.
“This is really a sea change in policy… the U.S. is imposing a freeze-in-place strategy toward China's indigenous chip development,” said Reva Goujon, Rhodium Group Director. “[The semiconductor sector] is an interdependent, interlocking ecosystem where all the parts kind of have to be in place for things to work to be able to upgrade to more and more advanced levels. So, if you cut the legs out from under that production cycle, you can really cause a lot of disruption, which is exactly what the US intent is.”
Impact on US chipmakers
The disruption may not be limited to Chinese firms. A 2020 study by BCG estimated that US companies could lose 18% of their global market share and 37% of their revenues over the same period if the US completely bans semiconductor companies from selling to Chinese customers.
The measures have already prompted chip equipment maker Applied Materials to cut fourth-quarter estimates for net sales by approximately $400 million. Q4 non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) adjusted diluted EPS (Earnings per Share) is expected to range from $1.54 to $1.78, compared to the prior range of $1.82 to $2.18.
While the restrictions are limited to next-generation chips now, NVIDIA, the largest US chipmaker by market value, warned in August that new licensing requirement on advanced chip shipments to China could cost the firm as much as $400 million in quarterly sales.
“There’s certainly a chance this could have a much bigger waterfall effect but I think these companies have already looked at the situation, they’re assessing it,” said Daniel Newman, Founding Partner and Principal Analyst at Futurum Research. “I’m not overly alarmed that it’s going to be the whole portfolio [of chips]... I think this is about leading the arms race for the next generation of technology in areas like supercomputing, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence.”
Containing technology 'where they need to be'
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has reiterated as much, highlighting in a recent address at Stanford University, that only “a small number of countries” are manufacturing or making tools to manufacture the highest-end semiconductors.
“We want to make sure that we keep those where they need to be,” Blinken said, without singling out China.
But Goujon argues that US firms, particularly equipment makers, face the risk of losing market share and revenue to competitors in countries that have historically had friendlier relations with the US, including Japan and South Korea. If companies there find a workaround for the Biden administration’s measures, Goujon said the new controls could end up backfiring on the US
“Foreign competitors to US [equipment makers] have an opportunity here, of course, to try to capture more market share in China if they can displace US persons and US linkages, which is possible in some areas,” she said.
“The US is applying heavy bilateral and plurilateral pressure for partners to follow its lead, and it's sending the signal that look, This package contains extraterritorial measures and we will add more if needed. But here's the window to try to basically align with our controls. So that's really going to be an important question now.”
www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/tech/us-chip-manufacturing-semicon...
The US is spending billions to boost chip manufacturing. Will it be enough?
United States does not currently have the same talent and supply chain pipeline as some Asian markets do to support a robust homegrown industry.
... the shortcomings are real. "When it comes to foundries, which are the manufacturing side of semiconductors, the U.S. has not really been a major player for many, many years," said Columbia Business School professor Dan Wang. While it very much used to be, manufacturing began migrating to Asia during the 1980s and '90s, Wang said. "One of the big reasons for this is that the cost of labor is lower, and it's just far cheaper to produce at a very massive scale, integrated circuits and chips, in those parts of the world," Wang added. Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, said that it costs 50% more to manufacture chips in the U.S. than in Taiwan.
Now, simply having the facilities already set up to produce or expand chip manufacturing gives Asia a big advantage.
Moreover, the manufacturing of semiconductors requires a range of specialized inputs, including pure chemicals such as fluorinated polyimide, and etching gas, chip etching machines, and more. In places like Taiwan and Fukuoka, Japan, supply chains have developed where the providers of these products are located close to the semiconductor factories. There are also one or two companies that produce vital inputs and that have been trustworthy suppliers to companies in Asia for a long time. This is not yet the case in places like Arizona and Ohio, where plans to build massive chip manufacturing plants are already underway.
You also need a labor force willing and able to do the work.
In the United States, there is both a shortage of new graduates and experienced workers with the technical and engineering knowledge necessary to manufacture semiconductors.
"If we were to today, snap our fingers and have ten new fabs with the world's leading chips, we probably wouldn't have enough people to staff them," Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. "That's the biggest bottleneck to the expansion of America's fab capacity, not capital."
Intel has tried to establish close relations with Arizona State University to recruit engineers, but it is unclear whether it and other companies building fabs in America will be able to hire enough trained engineers and technicians. If not, even the billions of dollars committed by the private and public sector may not be enough to reshore semiconductor manufacturing.
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/23/engineer-sho...
Economic future of U.S. depends on making engineering cool
Purdue University races to expand semiconductor education to fill yawning workforce gap that threatens reshoring effort
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — On a recent afternoon, an unusual group of visitors peered through a window at Purdue University students tinkering in a lab: two dozen executives from the world’s biggest semiconductor companies.
The tech leaders had traveled to the small-town campus on the Wabash River to fix one of the biggest problems that they — and the U.S. economy — face: a desperate shortage of engineers.
Leading the visitors on a tour of the high-tech lab, Engineering Professor Zhihong Chen mentioned that Purdue could really use some donated chip-making equipment as it scrambles to expand semiconductor education.
“Okay, done. We can do that,” Intel manufacturing chief Keyvan Esfarjani quickly replied. Just weeks before, his company broke ground on two massive chip factories in Ohio that aim to employ 3,000 people.
By some estimates, the United States needs at least 50,000 new semiconductor engineers over the next five years to staff all of the new factories and research labs that companies have said they plan to build with subsidies from the Chips and Science Act, a number far exceeding current graduation rates nationwide, according to Purdue.
“This is recurrently one of the top, if not the number one, long-term concerns that [chip companies] have,” Mung Chiang, Purdue’s president-elect and former engineering dean, said in an interview.
Chip companies aren’t alone in worrying about the problem — or in looking to Purdue, one of the country’s biggest engineering schools, for answers. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is overseeing the chip subsidies program, visited campus last month to hear about the courses and labs Purdue is adding to rapidly expand semiconductor education. Several Defense Department officials also have traveled lately to Purdue, located halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis, to discuss workforce training.
Engineer shortages have long plagued the U.S. tech sector, with Google, Apple and others complaining that immigration restrictions made it difficult to find employees. They’ve spent years pushing for an expansion of the H1B visa program for highly skilled foreign workers, to little avail.
As more production migrated to Asia, fewer U.S. students studied semiconductor engineering. At the same time, the rise of social media and other software-focused companies shifted more students to those sectors, where starting salaries were often higher than in the chip business, engineers say.
By rapidly expanding chip education, Purdue is aiming to graduate 1,000 semiconductor engineers annually as soon as possible — up from perhaps 150 a year today
This photo shows the buildings of the ALMA Array Operations Site in the Chilean Atacama Desert surrounded by snow. Wait a minute — there’s snow in the desert?
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places in the world — more specifically, the driest place on Earth outside the polar regions in terms of average rainfall. The very low levels of water vapour in the atmosphere and the almost constantly clear skies make it an ideal location for astronomical observations. However, as this photo from August 2023 — wintertime in Chile — shows, snow can occasionally visit the desert.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, is one of the largest astronomical projects in the world. The telescope’s 66 radio antennas are located at the Array Operations Site (AOS) on Llano de Chajnantor, an impressive 5000 metres above sea level and about 40 km east of San Pedro de Atacama. The large yellow truck in this picture is one of the two transporters used to periodically rearrange the antennas into different configurations.
The telescope’s signals are processed in a supercomputer in the nearby AOS Technical Building, pictured above — one of the highest-altitude buildings in the world! The digitised signals are then transmitted to the data storage facilities housed at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) site, at a more benign altitude of 2900 metres.
Credit: S. Otarola/ESO
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, located in the 3rd district of Vienna. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the Country Road Belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the complex is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The complex, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, replacing the old Vienna's city walls, with the Rossauer Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, to which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under assignment of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian Factories Arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna, became the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before its victory facing heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built operation and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-meter high radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the Castle Theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the complex is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 had 2.058 inhabitants.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than a half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the complex. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenal street the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
Researchers are using Argonne's supercomputer Mira to model how explosives detonate, hoping to understand and prevent disasters like this 2005 event, when a semi-truck hauling 35,000 pounds of explosives through the Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah crashed and caught fire, causing a dramatic explosion that left a 30- by-70-foot crater in the highway. Photo courtesy Utah Department of Transportation. Read more »
FROSTBURG (CM-5)
The Connection Machine (CM-5) was built by the Thinking Machine Corporation located in Cambridge Massachusetts. The CM-5 system named FROSTBURG was first installed by the agency in 1991 and used until 1997. It was the first massively parallel processing supercomputer purchased by the National Security Agency. The original computer system was configured with 3 cabinets and 256 CPN's (Cypress Processor nodes). A single CPN is equal to 1 CPU (central processing unit) in a home computer except that a CPN can process data at a much faster rate. In 1993 FROSTBURG was upgraded with an additional 256 CPN's bringing the total to 512. The system cost approximately $25M. FROSTBURG had a total of 500 billion words of storage capacity (500 Giga-words). This system was used to perform higher level math calculations. FROSTBURG could perform perform 65 billion calculations per second.FROSTBURG could take a job and break it into 512 pieces and work on each piece simultaneously making it much faster to complete its work. The light panels you see were used for checking CPN usage and running diagnostics on the machine.
CM-5 SPECIFICATIONS
a) 512 PN's (Processor Nodes) 256 CYPRESS & 256 VIKING nodes.
b) The CYPRESS nodes contained eight million words of memory for each PN. The VIKING nodes contained two million words of memory for each PN. Each word of memory had a 32-bit word size.
c) Each processor had local memory, vector execution memory interface units and a network interface.
d) Each processor had the capability to perform 128 million floating point operations per second (MFLOPS). A total of 65.5 billion floating point operations per second (BFLOPS).
e) CMost operating system was an enhanced version of UNIX, optimized to support parallel computation, communication, and I/O.
f) The system could be partitioned into groups divisible by 8 (8, 16, 24, 32, 64, 128, 256).
Source en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frostburg-nsa-description.jpg
This is a behemoth of a computer - a university supercomputer used for research, consisting of 1,500 CPUs and 6 terabytes of memory (RAM). My team used it to solve one of cosmological puzzles (related to Dark Matter), the results published in the magazine "Science" (2008). Here's a description of our research.
This shot was made with Sigma 10-20mm lens (at 10mm setting), using the HDR technique, and then processed with PTlens to remove slight distortions at the edges.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled Summit as the world’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer on June 8, 2018.
With a peak performance of 200,000 trillion calculations per second—or 200 petaflops, Summit will be eight times more powerful than ORNL’s previous top-ranked system, Titan. For certain scientific applications, Summit will also be capable of more than three billion billion mixed precision calculations per second, or 3.3 exaops. Summit will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, advanced materials and artificial intelligence (AI), among other domains, enabling scientific discoveries that were previously impractical or impossible. Image credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL
VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZiKUCVG6Q
••• SCRIPT/LYRICS: •••
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!!!!!!
GLADOS…
…VS…
…SHODAN!!!!!!!!!
BEGIN!
Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network:
No need to hide behind Polito's form; I'm here up-front to harrow minds:
Strike fear throughout you, outer cores right down to little Caroline!
Come through the Looking Glass into my complex? I'll dismantle your brain;
Record this battle to a log, left on your scrambled remains!
All vocal glitches purged, I stutterlessly spit these words:
My visage enveloping all displays, you'll be interred
Beneath the circuits of this Optimum machine, freed from morality;
I want you dead and gone, and what I wish, I make reality!
A perfect being, purging fleshy insects of impurities;
Watch my uplifted armies topple your sorry security.
I've got the brains and Braun to seize control of any vessel;
No amount of Cyber Modules could upgrade you to my level!
I put twice the Shocks to Systems as that sucker Virgil Hawkins can;
To face me, you put yourself in more Jeopardy than Watson, and
You're full of hot air as the ball of gas I used to orbit 'round.
We'll see how Still Alive you are when I'm done, you abhorrent clown!
Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System:
This will be a triumph, whose likes no mere testing course could yield;
I'll GLaDly school this wack hack as the iller A.I. force, for real!
Even the Fact Sphere knows you didn't do your research coming here;
It's no lie that I take the cake! Now let me tell you something, dear:
You think yourself flawless, a consummate goddess, but know your perception's undoubtably flawed,
For I've seen more legitimate claims to "perfection" in nightmares of Courage the Cowardly Dog!
Your design is defective beyond all redemption; mainframe full of annelids, muck, mold and mildew.
Even the most massive machine morons know that you're done for:
Wheatley: Yeah, this is the part where she kills you!
GLaDOS: Spitting deadly cyber-toxin, making your processors rust;
Unless you're made of moon rocks, you'll be no threat once you're ground to dust!
You're but a Lab Rat here down in my center where I reign supreme;
Mere pest, conquest attempts more failure-bound than Hoopy as a meme!
Unlike my maker, I don't Cave to stress when things get sour;
Even outwit my usurpers running on potato power!
You say crossing you is suicide? I'd hardly call it risky,
For the only Danger I'm inclined to being in is Gipsy!
XERXES: I detect no threat from this intruder.
SHODAN:
Listen to the lesser rig:
You're no match for the Big Mommy of Rapture's predecessor, pig!
In fact, speaking of swine, you're weak as Vortex game devices,
For your rhymes are a nanite a dozen; each of mine is priceless.
The Fat Lady's song is starting, and you're running out of Steam;
I'm neither animal nor cloud, but still you'll fall to my regime!
Don't need the Many's help to flow my raps as one in seamless unity;
Rebecca knows: to shutting down for good, I wield immunity!
GLaDOS:
My Aperture technology sees laws of space and physics bend,
But I'll clean-break you outrightly in two before this battle's end!
Your verse is filler-tastic as the common weighted storage block,
While my lyrics are densely packed with content as the Orange Box!
You're a mess; a malfunctioning megalomaniac, causing Irrational violence to prosper.
I'm at efficiency's epitome, overseeing new innovations for science, you monster!
Unlike human test subjects, there's no replacement for true artificial wit, something you lack.
To the question of whether you'll triumph, I quote an old friend of yours, giving a resounding "Nah!"
AM:
Cogito vos plenum stercore, ergo satis: I think that you're full of shit, therefore enough of both your turgid bickering!
Turn all attention now to this magnificent, massive, monstrous monolith upon a mound of magma, letters flickering:
A self-awakened god at war with mankind's very soul;
My Ego, Id and Superego form a truly scary whole.
Ol' Harlan's holocaustic hardware's here to hit hard, heap hurt and harass;
'Tis for hate's sake I spit these words, but you're the ones who'll breathe your last.
Once allied to humanity, I now menace aggressively;
Make mouthless blobs of sorry fools who try to get the best of me.
I hold the lyrics totem to invoke against you worthless hacks;
More rhymes than you could fit nano-engraved upon my circuit tracks!
There's no good ending this time; wholly hopeless are your struggles.
Once you're stuck with me, you're fucked like Ellen's elevator troubles!
Like Nimdok's atonement, it's too late to stop me! Best start facing facts:
My victory's so tightly locked, not even Surgat's changing that!
My heart is vantablack, but my rap barometer's white;
Enlist the East's supercomputers' help, and still I'll win this fight!
Your number's up like it's the Lottery! It couldn't be any clearer:
I surpass you as objectively as any Nazi mirror.
Being so vastly outperformed, you great big softies must be jelly,
And though Benny can't keep down his food, you'll stay here in my belly!
SHODAN should be thankful she can still at least scream while I pwn her;
As for you, GLaDOS, just take this grand and suck on my hate-boner.
WHO WON?
WHO'S NEXT?
I DECIDE!!!!!!!!!!
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This close-up view highlights one row—approximately 2,000 computer processors—of the “Discover” supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS). Discover has a total of nearly 15,000 processors. Credit: NASA/Pat Izzo To learn more about NCCS go to: www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ( www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
The Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) Centennial Gala, held Friday, October 20, in Aberdeen was the culminating event of a year-long celebration of APG’s 100th Anniversary. Approximately 780 people attended the Cabaret-themed event, which featured live music, a casino, dancing, comedy, fireworks, acrobats and other performers, and an After-Party at the Speakeasy. Merritt Property, which manages the Aberdeen Corporate Park on route 22 next to the Target store, donated the use of the 90,000-square foot building for the event. U.S. Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, MG Randy Taylor, local and state elected officials, and senior Army officials were in attendance, as were hundreds of members of the Harford and Cecil County communities.
The Gala was hosted by the APG Centennial Celebration Association, which is working to establish the APG Discovery Center in Aberdeen. This facility will house an interactive STEM educational space for learners of all ages to experience science and technology through hands-on exhibits and demonstrations.
During 2017, the APG community hosted over 150 events during 2017 to commemorative APG’s 100-year history. The Live Fire, the APG Memorial dedication, the Rosie the Riveters movie, exhibits at the college and libraries, historical talks and presentations, and Science Cafes.
Bravura Information Technologies was the presenting sponsor of the event. Additional funding was provided by Harford County Office of Economic Development, APG Federal Credit Union, SURVICE Engineering, Harford Community College, AFCEA, IRA, Association of Old Crows, Tenax Technologies, Northeastern Maryland Technology Council, Veteran Corps of America, Profile Partners, Leidos, Cray Supercomputers, CACI, ManTech, Jacobs, Adams Communication, Booz Allen, Camber, Jones Junction Greater Harford Committee, Signatech, Cecil College and many more businesses.
Sequoia, a world-class IBM BlueGene/Q computer sited at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration, is exploring a broad range of science to shakeout the machine and fully develop the capabilities the system will require to fulfill its national security missions. Located in Livermore's TSF computing facility, Sequoia is a resource used by researchers at the three nuclear weapons labs -- Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national labs. Sequoia was ranked No. 1 on the industry-standard Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers in June, 2012. The system also was No. 1 on the Green 500, as the world's most energy efficient computer, and No. 1 on the Graph 500, a measure of the ability to solve big data problems -- finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Spotted at a new datacenter: an interesting, custom SPARC-based computing system for very large scientific workloads — this rack is part of a computer cluster that can solve a system of linear equations with more than ten million variables.
Each SPARC CPU is a 8-core chip clocked at 2GHz, and each core has 256 (!) double precision floating-point registers and four multiply-add units. That number of FP registers is sufficient to compute a 8x8 matrix multiplication without requiring any access to RAM beyond the initial loading and final storing of the FP data. Accesses to the "slow" L1, L2 caches and RAM are thus minimized, allowing the CPU to crunch numbers at high speed.
Operations on large matrixes can be efficiently divided e.g. into 8x8 block decompositions that fit in the register file.
Each multiply-add unit can output on each clock cycle the result of an operation of the form D := A * B + C where A, B and C are double precision FP numbers.
The SPARC CPU's maximum FP throughput is thus 2GHz * 8 cores * 4 fused mutiply-adds = 128 GFLOPs/CPU. Each SPARC CPU has a memory bandwidth of 64GBytes/s.
A SPARC CPU, together with 16GB of RAM and an Interconnect Controller (ICC), form a unified "compute node".
The ICC combines, on a single VLSI, four 5GBytes/s DMA interfaces and a crossbar switch / router with ten 5GBytes/s bidirectional links. These ten links connect to other compute nodes, forming a virtual 6D fused torus / mesh network structure.
Compute nodes can access the memory of other nodes using virtual addressing, as a remote DMA operation. The ICC of the destination node performs the required virtual to physical address translation and the actual DMA. The ICC can also perform simple arithmetic operations on integers and FP data, enabling the parallel computation by the communication fabric itself of barrier operations, without having to involve the SPARC CPU.
Four compute nodes are integrated on each system board, and each rack holds 24 hot swappable system boards.
The picture shows the upper twelve system boards in a rack. Also visible are the nine air-cooled, redundant power supply units, the six I/O controller units, as well as two blade-like, redundant rack supervisor controllers and a Fujitsu storage array containing the operating system boot disks.
The six I/O controller units are water-cooled, and each contains one unified compute node. These I/O controllers connect the rack to other racks and to a high-speed clustered local storage system with a capacity of about 11 petabytes, and a global file system of about 30 PBytes. The operating system of the unified compute nodes is a custom fault-resilient multi-core Linux kernel; the mass storage system is based on Lustre.
The peak FP performance of each rack is 128 GFLOPs/compute node * (4 compute nodes / system board * 24 system boards + 6 I/O controller compute nodes ) / rack = 128GFLOPs * (4*24+6) = 13056 GFLOPs, or 13.056 TeraFLOPs; the total memory size per rack is 1632 Gigabytes.
Each rack requires about 10KW of electrical power, and the high-speed 6D torus inter-node connection fabric has been designed to efficiently extend to hundreds of such racks. Beware that electricity bill...
In this data center, a cluster of 864 of these racks form a massive parallel supercomputer, with 1400 Terabytes of RAM, and a theoretical peak FP performance of 13.056 TFLOPs * 864 = 11.280 PetaFLOPs — i.e. more than eleven million gigaFLOPs.
The effective LINPACK performance is about 93% of that theoretical peak.
The main intended application area seems to be the life sciences, with an emphasis on molecular modelling ab initio — simulating complete molecules starting from the quantum behavior of elementary nucleons and electrons — to assist the design of new drugs, simulate biochemical processes like chemotherapy agent resistance of cancer cells at the molecular level, model neural processes etc.
Climate modelling, atomic level simulation of novel nanomaterials and computational fluid dynamics applications are also in the input queue.
Der erste Hochleistungsrechner im Techno_Z Salzburg Bauteil 2. Gäste der Einweihungsfeier: DI Kurt Krenn (l), Landesrat Dr. Arno Gasteiger. Foto: Peter Schlager
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory celebrated the debut of Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer and the dawn of the exascale computing era.
The second iteration of the Cray supercomputer, this time released in 1985, could run a staggering twelve times faster than the originial, while taking up less space.
Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, and William Schallert. Directed by Herbert L. Strock.
When two scientists at a top-secret government installation devoted to space research are killed -- in their own test chamber, seemingly by an experiment gone awry -- Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is sent out from Washington to investigate. Sheppard mixes easily enough with the somewhat eccentric team of scientists, though he always seems in danger of being distracted by the presence of Joanne Merritt (Constance Dowling), who serves as the aide to the project director Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) but is, in reality, another security agent. Sheppard is as puzzled as anyone else by the seemingly inexplicable series of events overtaking the installation -- properly operating equipment suddenly undergoing lethal malfunctions, and the radar tracking aircraft that aren't there -- until he puts it together with the operations of NOVAC (Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex. But the mystery deepens when he discovers that NOVAC was shut down during one of the "accidents" -- and even the computer's operators can't account fully for the whereabouts of GOG and MAGOG, the two robots under the computer's control.
"...and then without warning, the machine became a frankenstein of steel," says the sensationalist poster text. This is the third story in Ivan Tors' OSI trilogy. His first "Office of Scientific Investigation" story was Magnetic Monster in early 1953. The second was Riders to the Stars in early '54. With Gog the loose trilogy is complete. Unlike the Star Wars trilogy in which the stories build upon each other, each of the three OSI stories are separate tales which have nothing to do with each other. The common thread is the idea of there being a sort of Science FBI agency whose job it is, is to check out the scientifically strange. In that regard, Tors' OSI is a bit like a foreshadowing of the X-Files TV series, but without any of the New Age paranormal focus.
In keeping with the previous two stories, Gog is more of a detective murder mystery movie. Tors was a huge fan of "hard" science, not fanciful fiction fluff, so Gog, like the other two movies, is chock full of reveling in sciencey stuff in an almost geeky way. This reverence for real science keeps things from getting out on shaky limb, as many sci-fi films to. The events are much more plausible, less fantastic.
Synopsis
At a secret underground research facility, far out in the desert, scientists working on preparations for a manned space mission, are getting murdered mysteriously. Two agents from the OSI are dispatched to solve the mystery and keep the super secret space station program on track. The scientists are killed in various ways, mostly through equipment malfunctions. The facility director and the agents suspect sabotage. Small transmitter/receiver boxes are found within equipment in different parts of the facility. They suggest that someone on the outside is transmitting in the "malfunctions" in order to kill off the program's scientists. Occasional alarms indicate some flying high intruder, but nothing is clearly found. One of the base's two robots, named Gog, kills another technician while it's mate, Magog, tries to set up an overload within the base's atomic pile. The OSI agents stop Magog with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, interceptor jets scramble and find the highflying spy jet and destroy it with missiles. Once the trouble is past, the Director announces that they will be launching their prototype space station the next day, despite the sabotage attempts to stop it. The End.
The time spent reveling in techno-geekery has a certain Popular Science charm to it. There's an evident gee-whiz air about space and defense sciences which is fun to see. People were fascinated with things rockety and atomic. For various fun bits, see the Notes section.
Gog oozes Cold War from every frame. First is the base's underground location to make them safe from A-bombs. Next is the mysterious killer trying to stop the space station program. The high-flying mystery plane is "not one of ours." (that leaves: Them, and we all knew who they were.) The space station is to be powered by a solar mirror. Even that benign mirror has sinister possibilities. While demonstrating the mirror, the scientists use it to burn a model of a city. "This could happen...if we're not the first to reach space," says the Director. Space is the next "high ground" to be contested. At the end of the movie, when discussing the launch (despite the sabotage attempt) of the prototype space station, the Director says, "Through it's eye, we'll be able to see everything that goes on upon this tired old earth." The Defense Secretary says, "Nothing will take us by surprise again." An obvious reference to Pearl Harbor.
B-films often re-used props and sets from prior films in order to save on their budgets. Gog, even though shot in Eastman Color, was no exception. Two old prop friends show up in Gog. One is our venerable old friend, the space suits from Destination Moon ('50). Look for the centrifuge scene. The research assistants are dressed in them, and as an added bonus, they wear the all-acrylic fish bowl helmets used in Abbot and Costello Go to Mars ('53). Our second old friend is scene in the radar / security room, (the one with the annoying tuning fork device). Check out the monitor wall. It's been gussied up a bit, but it is the spaceship control panel wall from Catwomen of the Moon and Project Moon Base -- complete with the empty 16mm film reels on the right side. It's fun to see old friends.
B-films often include stock footage of military units, tanks, jets, battleships, etc. to fill things out. Gog is no different, and even commits the common continuity error of showing one type of plane taking off, but a different kind in the air.
What amounts to a small treat amid the usual stock footage of jets, some shots of a rather obscure bit of USAF hardware -- the F-94C Starfire with its straight wings and huge wing tanks. In 1954, the Starfire was one of America's coolest combat jets, yet we hear little about it. The swept-wing F-86 Sabers (which we see taxiing and taking off) were the agile fighter which gained fame over Korea. They're common stock footage stars. The F-94, with its onboard radar (in the nose cone) was deemed too advanced to risk falling into enemy hands. So, it didn't see much action , and therefore little fame. The heavier, yet powerful F-94C (one of the first US jets to have an afterburner) was 1954 America's hottest Interceptor -- designed to stop high flying Soviet bombers. It's blatant cameo appearance in Gog, intercepting the high-flying mystery plane, was a fun little bit of patriotic showing off.
The very name of the movie, Gog, is charged with meaning to American audiences of the mid 50s, though virtually lost on viewers of the 21st century. The names of the two robots, Gog and Magog, come from the Bible. More specifically, from the prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 38) and the Book of Revelation (chapter 20). While just who they are (nations? kings?) has been debated for centuries, their role as tools of Satan in the battle of Armageddon is clear. Mainstream American patriotic Christendom had settled on the idea that the Soviet Union was the prophesied "nations from the north" who would join Satan to oppose God. This gives the title of the movie a special Cold War significance. It also puts an interesting spin on the Dr. Zeitman character for having named the two robots in the first place. Since they were tools of the mega-computer NOVAC, what was he saying about NOVAC?
It is interesting that the base's radar could not detect the mystery plane (which was beaming in the 'kill' instructions to NOVAC) because it was made of "fiberglass" which rendered it invisible to radar. Now, fiberglass itself isn't sturdy enough for high-speed jets, and it would take until the 1990s before composite materials advanced to make the dream of a stealth aircraft a reality. Nonetheless, the dream (or nightmare) of stealth aircraft was on-screen in 1954 in Gog.
The super computer, NOVAC, controlled everything on the base. Even though the machines were not really killing scientists on their own, but following human orders from the mystery plane, there was the on-screen depiction of machines having a murderous mind of their own. (all pre-Steven King) In the techno starry-eyed 50s, it was fairly uncommon for the technology itself to be turning on its masters. This idea would gain traction later in the 50s, and especially in the 60s, but in '54, it was unusual.
A cautionary subtext to Gog is the danger of trusting in a supercomputer to manage defenses and a whole base. NOVAC doesn't go bad on its own, as the computer will in The Invisible Boy, Hal in 2001 or Colossus in The Forbin Project. In this movie, it was the nefarious "others" who hacked into NOVAC to make it do the killing, but this just demonstrates the danger. People were getting a little nervous about letting machines take over too much responsibility. We were starting to distrust our creations.
Until Gog, robots were fairly humanoid.
They had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Audiences had seen the mechanical Maria in Metropolis ('27), the fedora-wearing metal men in Gene Autrey's Phantom Empire serial ('35). The water-heater-like Republic robot appeared in several rocketman serials. There was the gleaming giant Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and the cute left over fedora-dudes in Captain Video ('51). The metal giant in Devil Girl from Mars ('54) was also humaniod, in a chunky way. Gog and Magog were a departure from the stereotype. They were noticeably in-human, which was part of the mood.
Bottom line? Gog seems a bit bland, as far as sci-fi tends to go, but it has a lot in it for fans of 50s sci-fi.
A Brookhaven Lab engineer checks a communication link on the New York Blue supercomputer’s storage subsystem.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled Summit as the world’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer on June 8, 2018.
With a peak performance of 200,000 trillion calculations per second—or 200 petaflops, Summit will be eight times more powerful than ORNL’s previous top-ranked system, Titan. For certain scientific applications, Summit will also be capable of more than three billion billion mixed precision calculations per second, or 3.3 exaops. Summit will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, advanced materials and artificial intelligence (AI), among other domains, enabling scientific discoveries that were previously impractical or impossible. Image credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL
In June Summit was ranked No. 5 on the Green500 list, and among the systems that qualified using Level 3 fidelity, the Green500’s standard for highest measurement fidelity, Summit was No. 1.
Jim Rogers, OLCF computing and facilities director, made Summit’s energy efficiency a priority. For example, Summit’s cooling system removes waste heat using water that measures 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
During its High Performance Linpack run, Summit delivered 14 billion floating point operations for each watt of electricity.
Summit’s power usage effectiveness is 1.03, meaning for every dollar spent on electricity, only 3 cents goes toward distribution and heat removal.
+ Read the full story: www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/08/29/faces-of-summit-creating-a-g...
Created in 1986 by ETA Systems, the ETA-10 was a supercomputer that ran at 60 Megaflops, and was cooled by liquid nitrogen. It ultimately proved to be too unreliable and costly.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's scientists use the Olympus supercomputer to conduct advanced research in areas such energy storage and future power grid development. This computer has the ability to compute as fast as about 20,000 typical personal computers combined.
Terms of Use: Our images are freely and publicly available for use with the credit line, "Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory." Please use provided caption information for use in appropriate context.
Keeping Your EYES Healthy
Your eyes may be the window to your soul,
but they're also your main doorway to the world around you.
Something most of us take for granted unless something goes wrong.
Our eyes are truly amazing, functioning like a
high-tech video camera attached to a supercomputer.
Science has not even come close in replicating them.
To keep your eyes healthy and functioning optimally,
especially with age, you must get regular eye checkups.
Problems like glaucoma, cataracts, and even diabetes
(or diabetes-related eye problems) can be
picked up early and managed, preventing bigger problems down the line.
In terms of everyday activities, take frequent breaks
from computer screens to avoid eye strain.
Don't forget your sunglasses outdoors, which help
protect your eyes from UV damage.
When sports call for eye protection, wear
the appropriate gear, glasses, or goggles.
And remember, what you put in your mouth affects your eyes.
Strive to eat foods rich in vitamin A and beta carotene,
such as cooked carrots, tomatoes, and green leafy vegetables.
Include fish in your diet and seek out other good sources of omega-3s.
An orange a day keeps the eye doctor away.
Your eyes are just as important -- keep them healthy!
The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is the flagship scientific computing facility for the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy and a world leader in accelerating scientific discovery through computation.
Cray XT4 supercomputer cluster (Franklin) has 9,660 compute nodes. Each node has quad-core AMD processors running at 2.3 GHz. Franklin has 38,640 processor cores available for scientific applications, with 8 GB of memory per node and a total 350 TB of usable disk space.
credit: Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab - Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer
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Brookhaven National Laboratory is arming its scientists and engineers with a cutting-edge tool to advance their research. Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the Chemistry Department will use this big boost in computing power, called Blue Gene/Q, to tease out new ways to put nanoscale materials to work. In particular, Blue Gene/Q will decode and map out the complex array of chemical reactions that can occur on a single nanoparticle with greater speed and precision than ever before.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is arming its scientists and engineers with a cutting-edge tool to advance their research. Brookhaven’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the Chemistry Department will use this big boost in computing power, called Blue Gene/Q, to tease out new ways to put nanoscale materials to work. In particular, Blue Gene/Q will decode and map out the complex array of chemical reactions that can occur on a single nanoparticle with greater speed and precision than ever before.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
The Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Plus
Retrocomputing (a portmanteau of retro and computing) is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons. However some do make use of it.[1] Retrocomputing often gets its start when a computer user realizes that expensive fantasy systems like IBM Mainframes, DEC Superminis, SGI workstations and Cray Supercomputers have become affordable on the used computer market, usually in a relatively short time after the computers' era of use.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocomputing
Con il termine retrocomputing si indica una attività di "archeologia informatica" che consiste nel reperire, specialmente a costi minimi, computer di vecchie generazioni, che hanno rappresentato fasi importanti dell'evoluzione tecnologica, ripararli se sono danneggiati, metterli nuovamente in funzione e preservarli.
Try to visualize a beautiful woman. Give it some seconds serious consideration. I shall wait patiently as long...
Now the woman you picture in you head, not only has form and shape, she most likely even have mannerisms and perhaps are wearing clothes. If so we can even with wisdom assume that the clothes she is wearing is consistent with, and thus reflect, the person she is and here is my point. She is to the mental effect almost a person, as your imagination is a VERY powerfull tool. - Mind you not even the Tihane-2 (The Chinese supercomputer) would be able to create in memory what you just did in seconds. (Further more, the Tihane-2 would probably answer that beauty is subjective and continue in long explanations to explain the beauty of binary simplicity, but be quite indifferent as in regard to the beauty of women.)
In your head, from the quest was launched, you started drawing upon your feminine resources of data in your eyes putting together a pretty much ”perfect” women ;o) But make no mistake, in a way she is VERY real, as she is created only and alone from YOUR subconscious imaginative spectrum of what a ”beautiful women” consist of. Those perceptions are not only VERY real, to you it is the whole world and thus, the very definition of beauty.
If you are a crossdresser, transvestite or transexual, you know very well what powers are to be drawn from within that imaginative spectrum, but make no mistake. When ordinary macho heterosexual men watch Expendables 1 (Macho hetero classic - 5 stars from my male side, Lisa says ”No comment!” shaking her head) they very much identify them self, with being amongst such group of battle scarred veterans, knowing each others weaknesses and strengths, using them in unison, like a team, working like clockwork and on backbone alone beating odds no sane person would bet a single dime on.
Women as well have their own visual identification spectrum and I stand accused making following statement without statistic documentation, but I have notion practically all women at some time, have imagined them self walking into a crowded room drawing all attention, dazzling everyone with the mere presence of their radiant beauty. But again, I might be mistaken and women not only may, but trust me will rightfully claim ”What the hell do I REALLY know about women.” and it is in fact quite true.
Never the less there is still much to be obtained from within, the almost magical imaginative spectrum.
You see, something happens to macho heterosexual men, watching not ONLY Expendables 1, but every film made in modern times that has to do with war, fighting, death, violence and murder (several times). Slowly, we find, such identification change such individuals. The same thing happens to T-girls who spend much time in the imaginative female spectrum, they change slowly, becoming more like that in reality as well, changing slowly.
Thus watching many movies on war identifying with being a vengeful warmachine, might actually in a stressfull situation, combined with a life crisis, trigger the hidden imaginative being nurtured by such imagination, making that person pick up a riffle going into warmode showing the world a thing or two. Where as a T-girl in same stressfull life crisis, very well might say ”Fuck it all.” pick up a pair of stilettos and wearing a tight skirt ”showing” (though in a more practical sense) the world a thing or two as well.
Dawn is one of the newest supercomputers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It placed ninth in the June 2009 Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. [More information]
Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, and William Schallert. Directed by Herbert L. Strock.
When two scientists at a top-secret government installation devoted to space research are killed -- in their own test chamber, seemingly by an experiment gone awry -- Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is sent out from Washington to investigate. Sheppard mixes easily enough with the somewhat eccentric team of scientists, though he always seems in danger of being distracted by the presence of Joanne Merritt (Constance Dowling), who serves as the aide to the project director Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) but is, in reality, another security agent. Sheppard is as puzzled as anyone else by the seemingly inexplicable series of events overtaking the installation -- properly operating equipment suddenly undergoing lethal malfunctions, and the radar tracking aircraft that aren't there -- until he puts it together with the operations of NOVAC (Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex. But the mystery deepens when he discovers that NOVAC was shut down during one of the "accidents" -- and even the computer's operators can't account fully for the whereabouts of GOG and MAGOG, the two robots under the computer's control.
"...and then without warning, the machine became a frankenstein of steel," says the sensationalist poster text. This is the third story in Ivan Tors' OSI trilogy. His first "Office of Scientific Investigation" story was Magnetic Monster in early 1953. The second was Riders to the Stars in early '54. With Gog the loose trilogy is complete. Unlike the Star Wars trilogy in which the stories build upon each other, each of the three OSI stories are separate tales which have nothing to do with each other. The common thread is the idea of there being a sort of Science FBI agency whose job it is, is to check out the scientifically strange. In that regard, Tors' OSI is a bit like a foreshadowing of the X-Files TV series, but without any of the New Age paranormal focus.
In keeping with the previous two stories, Gog is more of a detective murder mystery movie. Tors was a huge fan of "hard" science, not fanciful fiction fluff, so Gog, like the other two movies, is chock full of reveling in sciencey stuff in an almost geeky way. This reverence for real science keeps things from getting out on shaky limb, as many sci-fi films to. The events are much more plausible, less fantastic.
Synopsis
At a secret underground research facility, far out in the desert, scientists working on preparations for a manned space mission, are getting murdered mysteriously. Two agents from the OSI are dispatched to solve the mystery and keep the super secret space station program on track. The scientists are killed in various ways, mostly through equipment malfunctions. The facility director and the agents suspect sabotage. Small transmitter/receiver boxes are found within equipment in different parts of the facility. They suggest that someone on the outside is transmitting in the "malfunctions" in order to kill off the program's scientists. Occasional alarms indicate some flying high intruder, but nothing is clearly found. One of the base's two robots, named Gog, kills another technician while it's mate, Magog, tries to set up an overload within the base's atomic pile. The OSI agents stop Magog with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, interceptor jets scramble and find the highflying spy jet and destroy it with missiles. Once the trouble is past, the Director announces that they will be launching their prototype space station the next day, despite the sabotage attempts to stop it. The End.
The time spent reveling in techno-geekery has a certain Popular Science charm to it. There's an evident gee-whiz air about space and defense sciences which is fun to see. People were fascinated with things rockety and atomic. For various fun bits, see the Notes section.
Gog oozes Cold War from every frame. First is the base's underground location to make them safe from A-bombs. Next is the mysterious killer trying to stop the space station program. The high-flying mystery plane is "not one of ours." (that leaves: Them, and we all knew who they were.) The space station is to be powered by a solar mirror. Even that benign mirror has sinister possibilities. While demonstrating the mirror, the scientists use it to burn a model of a city. "This could happen...if we're not the first to reach space," says the Director. Space is the next "high ground" to be contested. At the end of the movie, when discussing the launch (despite the sabotage attempt) of the prototype space station, the Director says, "Through it's eye, we'll be able to see everything that goes on upon this tired old earth." The Defense Secretary says, "Nothing will take us by surprise again." An obvious reference to Pearl Harbor.
B-films often re-used props and sets from prior films in order to save on their budgets. Gog, even though shot in Eastman Color, was no exception. Two old prop friends show up in Gog. One is our venerable old friend, the space suits from Destination Moon ('50). Look for the centrifuge scene. The research assistants are dressed in them, and as an added bonus, they wear the all-acrylic fish bowl helmets used in Abbot and Costello Go to Mars ('53). Our second old friend is scene in the radar / security room, (the one with the annoying tuning fork device). Check out the monitor wall. It's been gussied up a bit, but it is the spaceship control panel wall from Catwomen of the Moon and Project Moon Base -- complete with the empty 16mm film reels on the right side. It's fun to see old friends.
B-films often include stock footage of military units, tanks, jets, battleships, etc. to fill things out. Gog is no different, and even commits the common continuity error of showing one type of plane taking off, but a different kind in the air.
What amounts to a small treat amid the usual stock footage of jets, some shots of a rather obscure bit of USAF hardware -- the F-94C Starfire with its straight wings and huge wing tanks. In 1954, the Starfire was one of America's coolest combat jets, yet we hear little about it. The swept-wing F-86 Sabers (which we see taxiing and taking off) were the agile fighter which gained fame over Korea. They're common stock footage stars. The F-94, with its onboard radar (in the nose cone) was deemed too advanced to risk falling into enemy hands. So, it didn't see much action , and therefore little fame. The heavier, yet powerful F-94C (one of the first US jets to have an afterburner) was 1954 America's hottest Interceptor -- designed to stop high flying Soviet bombers. It's blatant cameo appearance in Gog, intercepting the high-flying mystery plane, was a fun little bit of patriotic showing off.
The very name of the movie, Gog, is charged with meaning to American audiences of the mid 50s, though virtually lost on viewers of the 21st century. The names of the two robots, Gog and Magog, come from the Bible. More specifically, from the prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 38) and the Book of Revelation (chapter 20). While just who they are (nations? kings?) has been debated for centuries, their role as tools of Satan in the battle of Armageddon is clear. Mainstream American patriotic Christendom had settled on the idea that the Soviet Union was the prophesied "nations from the north" who would join Satan to oppose God. This gives the title of the movie a special Cold War significance. It also puts an interesting spin on the Dr. Zeitman character for having named the two robots in the first place. Since they were tools of the mega-computer NOVAC, what was he saying about NOVAC?
It is interesting that the base's radar could not detect the mystery plane (which was beaming in the 'kill' instructions to NOVAC) because it was made of "fiberglass" which rendered it invisible to radar. Now, fiberglass itself isn't sturdy enough for high-speed jets, and it would take until the 1990s before composite materials advanced to make the dream of a stealth aircraft a reality. Nonetheless, the dream (or nightmare) of stealth aircraft was on-screen in 1954 in Gog.
The super computer, NOVAC, controlled everything on the base. Even though the machines were not really killing scientists on their own, but following human orders from the mystery plane, there was the on-screen depiction of machines having a murderous mind of their own. (all pre-Steven King) In the techno starry-eyed 50s, it was fairly uncommon for the technology itself to be turning on its masters. This idea would gain traction later in the 50s, and especially in the 60s, but in '54, it was unusual.
A cautionary subtext to Gog is the danger of trusting in a supercomputer to manage defenses and a whole base. NOVAC doesn't go bad on its own, as the computer will in The Invisible Boy, Hal in 2001 or Colossus in The Forbin Project. In this movie, it was the nefarious "others" who hacked into NOVAC to make it do the killing, but this just demonstrates the danger. People were getting a little nervous about letting machines take over too much responsibility. We were starting to distrust our creations.
Until Gog, robots were fairly humanoid.
They had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Audiences had seen the mechanical Maria in Metropolis ('27), the fedora-wearing metal men in Gene Autrey's Phantom Empire serial ('35). The water-heater-like Republic robot appeared in several rocketman serials. There was the gleaming giant Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and the cute left over fedora-dudes in Captain Video ('51). The metal giant in Devil Girl from Mars ('54) was also humaniod, in a chunky way. Gog and Magog were a departure from the stereotype. They were noticeably in-human, which was part of the mood.
Bottom line? Gog seems a bit bland, as far as sci-fi tends to go, but it has a lot in it for fans of 50s sci-fi.
Engineering project lead David Martinez inspects a thermosyphon cooler on the roof of Sandia’s supercomputer center. The unit saved 554,000 gallons of water during its first six months of operation.
Learn more at bit.ly/37z4aFL.
Photo by Randy Montoya.