View allAll Photos Tagged SuperComputer
This is Mississippi State University's newest supercomputer. It is a 256 node IBM iDataPlex. Each node has two six core Intel X5660 "Westmere" processors (2.8GHz), 24 GB of RAM, and QDR InfiniBand. All nodes are diskless.
So, in total, it has 3072 processor cores and 6 Terabyes of memory.
It has a theoretical peak performance of 34.4 PetaFLOPS (trillion calculations per second).
To put this performance into perspective, if you sat down with a pencil and paper and started doing long division problems at a rate of one per second, and you worked 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, this machine can calculate in one second what it would take you over one milion years to calculate by hand.
Strobist: LumoPro LP120 full power, gelled with a piece of blue plastic from a Lego model of a Mars Rover (hey, you make do with what's available) on a stand behind the system. Canon 580EX II , 1/2 power, mounted camera left on an 8 foot tall stand bouncing off a 43" Westcott umbrella. Triggered with Cactus V2s triggers.
Update: This system was ranked as the 331st fastest computer in the world and the 18th fastest computer at any university in the U.S. on the June 2010 Top500 Supercomputer Sites List. The June 2010 Green500 List ranks it as the most energy efficient x86-based supercomputer in the world, and the 9th ranked most efficient computer in the world overall. It achieved 418.47 million calculations per Watt of energy consumed while running the Linpack benchmark. It was also the first system ever submitted to the Green HPCC list, which measures energy efficiency on systems while running the HPC Challenge Benchmark, which, I guess means that it's #1 on that list!
Rivers of cables for Dawn, 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]
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
In 1988, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory installed the first totally new supercomputer operating system in 20 years on the Livermore Computer Center’s (LCC) Cray X/MP/48. The new Network Livermore Timesharing System (NLTSS) replaced the old Livermore Timesharing System. Nearly five years in design and four years in implementation, NLTSS was a state-of-the-art distributed processing system, providing more efficient use both of the center’s powerful multiprocessor supercomputers and the researcher’s own enhanced workstation.
Argonne's Blue Gene/P supercomputer, tinted green in this photo to illustrate its environmentally friendly low energy consumption, is one of the world's fastest computers for open scientific research.
The city pulse, there is not always a glitched haywire rampage giga-bot on the rampage, not always invading Blacktron or Magnetrons, not always different police factions on shoot-outs in some dead end alley…
The planet-spanning city on the capital planet divide in sectors, levels and blocks, a dirty place with artificial lighting both night and day, but the citizens know no other, and they love the diesel, industrial vents, the peeing mutant rats, it is all in their blood, quite literally…
Some days, the postmen on a prolonged break stand about and chat in different languages and some in broken galactic standard, talking about stamps and quests of undeliverable letters, laughing together, no matter if they have wings or tentacled…
A policeman has skipped work to meet a date, perhaps a payed on with a zeltrone??? He nearly runs over a granny cyborg from The planet Pluto on her way to look for her cybernetic dog, on the run again…
The Fire fighters are on another false alarm, they swear in italian and irish since their truck broke down… the road workers whistle when a hunky guy from an unknown planet walks past, while one of their shovels hits something hard, a fossilized gameboy from the 20th century…
A television crew are enjoying a smoke on a balcony while they brag of their scoops when they caught the block-mayor without his trousers down or when the revealed that a gangster rapper had a diploma from Oxford…
Just an ordinary day in the planet-spanning urban jungle called the capital planet…
No one knows how many live there, partially because no one have managed to make categorisation on who is alive or where the boundaries of sentient creatures are, are the digitally enhanced cyber-slime-mold really sentient? Does he even know himself? No matter what, he is a good businessman and counts better than the best supercomputer… or is the droid that has a split personality due to an evolutionary crossbreed program he was infected with while he connected to a money machine with his pocket-wire digital USB, does this entity count as one or several entities?
There is a lot of things no one knows, but all know that despite all, every cog in this complicated mosaik we call the city, turns and twist and revolves in its own way affecting other cogs, and at the end, somehow despite everything this giant complicated aleatoric random giga-structure somehow runs despite everything…
Some even propose that the city itself is as much of a superorganism as a colony of ants or a colonial organism…
No matter what, until today, every day, most of its inhabitants wake up to a new day… and in yet another day this megastructure of interactions somehow cope for another day to turn and turn!!!
Edited Chandra Space Telescope visualization of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Original caption: Want to take a trip to the center of the Milky Way? Check out a new immersive, ultra-high-definition visualization. This 360-movie offers an unparalleled opportunity to look around the center of the galaxy, from the vantage point of the central supermassive black hole, in any direction the user chooses.
By combining NASA Ames supercomputer simulations with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, this visualization provides a new perspective of what is happening in and around the center of the Milky Way. It shows the effects of dozens of massive stellar giants with fierce winds blowing off their surfaces in the region a few light years away from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short).
These winds provide a buffet of material for the supermassive black hole to potentially feed upon. As in a previous visualization, the viewer can observe dense clumps of material streaming toward Sgr A*. These clumps formed when winds from the massive stars near Sgr A* collide. Along with watching the motion of these clumps, viewers can watch as relatively low-density gas falls toward Sgr A*. In this new visualization, the blue and cyan colors represent X-ray emission from hot gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees; red shows moderately dense regions of cooler gas, with temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees; and yellow shows of the cooler gas with the highest densities.
A collection of X-ray-emitting gas is seen to move slowly when it is far away from Sgr A*, and then pick up speed and whip around the viewer as it comes inwards. Sometimes clumps of gas will collide with gas ejected by other stars, resulting in a flash of X-rays when the gas is heated up, and then it quickly cools down. Farther away from the viewer, the movie also shows collisions of fast stellar winds producing X-rays. These collisions are thought to provide the dominant source of hot gas that is seen by Chandra.
When an outburst occurs from gas very near the black hole, the ejected gas collides with material flowing away from the massive stars in winds, pushing this material backwards and causing it to glow in X-rays. When the outburst dies down the winds return to normal and the X-rays fade.
The 360-degree video of the Galactic Center is ideally viewed through virtual reality (VR) goggles, such as Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard. The video can also be viewed on smartphones using the YouTube app. Moving the phone around reveals a different portion of the movie, mimicking the effect in the VR goggles. Finally, most browsers on a computer also allow 360-degree videos to be shown on YouTube. To look around, either click and drag the video, or click the direction pad in the corner.
Dr. Christopher Russell of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Pontifical Catholic University) presented the new visualization at the 17th meeting of the High-Energy Astrophysics (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society held in Monterey, Calif. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
Busbar Power Distribution Systems by EAE Elektrik, part of the infrastructure for the new Dutch petascale national supercomputer, "Cartesius", provided and built by Bull.
In June 1954, the first of two IBM 701s arrived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The IBM 701 had a 4,096-word memory, each word being 36-bits; equivalent to almost 12 decimal digits. The parallel feature meant the machine did most of its internal operations including arithmetical on whole words and much faster than the Lab’s UNIVAC. According to computation pioneer George Michael, however, the machine “freely made mistakes, but never reported them.” Input for the 701 was prepared on a keypunch and entered through a card reader.
KITT or K.I.T.T. is the short name of two fictional characters from the adventure franchise Knight Rider. While having the same acronym, the KITTs are two different entities: one known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which appeared in the original TV series Knight Rider.
During filming, KITT was voiced by a script assistant, with voice actors recording KITT's dialog later. David Hasselhoff and original series voice actor William Daniels first met each other six months after the series began filming. KITT's evil twin is KARR, whose name is an acronym of Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR was voiced first by Peter Cullen and later by Paul Frees in seasons one and three, respectively, of the NBC original TV series Knight Rider.
In the original Knight Rider series, the character of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was physically embodied as a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The "brain" of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, which is the centre of a "self-aware" cybernetic logic module. This allows KITT to think, learn, communicate and interact with humans. He is also capable of independent thought and action. He has an ego that is easy to bruise and displays a very sensitive, but kind and dryly humorous personality.
JURY DISTINCTION FOR CATEGORY 1. OBJECT OF STUDY
Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Diego Rossinelli, Jatta Berberat and Gilles Fourestey
This supercomputing simulation shows how cerebrospinal fluid streams around the optic nerve (the latter passes through the centre of the “donut” but has been removed for clarity). The flow is visualised by streamlines coloured logarithmically according to their speed. The cerebrospinal fluid flows from the brain to the optic nerve, supplying it with nutrients and removing toxic metabolites. The subarachnoid space in which it flows features complex structures at different scales, creating patterns with numerous bifurcations and junctions. An impaired flow plays a central role in eye pathologies such as papilledema and certain types of glaucoma.
The geometry of the structure was captured with synchrotron-radiation microtomography of a human optic nerve at the Paul Scherrer Institute; it consists of more than two terabytes of data. The flow field was computed with very accurate Fourier-based schemes on the Helvetios supercomputer at EPFL.
Comment of the jury │ The image, striking for its fascinating and somehow alien aesthetic, shows the power of digital modelling in opening up new perspectives on nature and biology. It unveils the inner world of the vision system and its complex organic reality. The viewer contemplates what is currently occurring in their own body, possibly getting lost in the labyrinth-like intricacies of unknown current lines.
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Cette simulation faite par superordinateur révèle comment le liquide céphalo-rachidien s’écoule autour du nerf optique (ce dernier qui passe par le centre de l’anneau a été retiré pour plus de clarté). L’écoulement est visualisé par des lignes de courant colorées de manière logarithmique en fonction de leur vitesse. Le liquide céphalo-rachidien circule du cerveau vers le nerf optique, lui apportant des nutriments et éliminant les métabolites toxiques. L’espace sous-arachnoïdien dans lequel il circule présente des structures complexes à différentes échelles qui créent des flux ayant de nombreuses bifurcations et jonctions. Une altération de l’écoulement du liquide céphalo-rachidien joue un rôle central dans des pathologies oculaires telles que l’œdème papillaire et certains types de glaucome.
La géométrie de la structure a été acquise par une microtomographie par rayonnement synchrotron d’un nerf optique humain à l’Institut Paul Scherrer et totalise plus de deux téraoctets de données. Les flux de l’écoulement ont été calculés sur le superordinateur Helvetios de l’EPFL à l’aide de schémas de Fourier très précis.
Commentaire du jury │ L’image frappe par son esthétique singulière tout en démontrant le potentiel de la modélisation numérique pour ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives sur la nature et la biologie. Elle nous révèle le monde intérieur du système visuel et sa réalité organique complexe. Nous contemplons ainsi ce qui se passe présentement dans notre propre corps, nous perdant un peu dans les inextricables méandres façonnés par des flux énigmatiques.
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Diese von einem Supercomputer erstellte Simulation veranschaulicht, wie die Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit um den Sehnerv herumfliesst (der Sehnerv verläuft durch die Mitte des Donuts, wurde aber für eine bessere Übersichtlichkeit entfernt). Das Fliessen wird durch Strömungslinien visualisiert, die je nach Geschwindigkeit logarithmisch eingefärbt sind. Die Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit zirkuliert vom Gehirn zum Sehnerv, versorgt ihn mit Nährstoffen und entfernt giftige Stoffwechselprodukte. Der Subarachnoidalraum, in dem die Flüssigkeit zirkuliert, weist auf verschiedenen Ebenen komplexe Strukturen auf, wodurch Flüsse mit Verzweigungen und Mündungen entstehen. Beeinträchtigungen dieser Zirkulation der Gehirn-Rückenmark-Flüssigkeit spielen eine zentrale Rolle bei Augenerkrankungen wie dem Papillenödem und bestimmten Glaukomen.
Die Geometrie der Struktur wurde aus mehr als zwei Terabyte Daten errechnet, die bei einer am Paul Scherrer Institut durchgeführten Synchrotron-Mikrotomographie bei einem menschlichen Sehnerv gewonnen wurden. Die Flüsse wurden auf dem Supercomputer Helvetios der EPFL mit äusserst präzisen Fourier-Transformationen berechnet.
Kommentar der Jury │ Das Bild besticht durch eine aussergewöhnliche Ästhetik und veranschaulicht gleichzeitig das Potenzial der digitalen Modellierung, die neue Blickwinkel auf Natur und Biologie eröffnet. Es enthüllt die Innenwelt des visuellen Systems und dessen komplexe physische Realität. Wir betrachten, was in unserem eigenen Körper vor sich geht, und verlieren uns ein wenig in den unentwirrbar mäandrierenden, geheimnisvollen Strömen.
(WIP pic, more picures and better renders to come)
Name: P.C.S. York
Affiliation: Phoenix Command Group, (vigilante frontier mercenary group dedicated to protecting the innocent, preventing crime, and exposing corruption. Formerly Kolter Mining security division. Formally United Earth Federation (working title) Federal Defense Navy (working title)
Class Name: Monarch class
Type: Fast Battleship
Commissioned: Circa mid 2500’s, pre recent major conflict
Specifications:
Length: 1,221 meters (122.1 studs, 38.5 inches, 97.7 cm model)
Width: 429 meters (42.9 studs, 12.5 inches, 34.3 cm model)
Height: 305 meters (30.5 studs, 9.7 inches, 24.4 cm model)
Crew: 2,700 standard complement + up to 2,000 Star Quest marine detachment and embarked craft pilots and flight crew
Armament: 6 triple-mounted heavy railgun turrets, 8 triple-mounted rapid fire medium particle cannon turrets, 24 dual-mounted medium railgun turrets, 174 quad-mounted 80mm anti-fighter flak railgun turrets
Defensive systems:
Hull: Heavy advanced steel alloy hull with carbon nanotube/buckypaper composite layers as spall lining.
Armor plating: titanium alloy, tungsten, carbon nanotube composite armor layers against kinetic, kinetic spalling, particle, laser, and plasma fire. Composite hull provides excellent survivability at low mass due to the advanced composite design.
Bulkheads: Extensive titanium bulkhead support network.
Structural integrity field: High power system designed for extreme acceleration.
Shielding: Internally housed advanced, high power, rapid regeneration adaptive particle field repulsing shielding system capable of surviving extreme punishment.
Powerplant: 2 primary matter-antimatter reactors with extensive fuel reserves, 2 secondary, and 1 tertiary fusion reactors with extensive fuel reserves. Multiple massive power capacitors. Extensive heatinks.
Propulsion: 3 primary 8 secondary, and 8 tertiary fusion engines for sub-lightspeed travel, 1 internal FTL core capable of high speed, long range travel, 192 reaction control thrusters, and 48 reaction control wheels for below light speed maneuvering.
Computer systems: Multiple supercomputer cores with onboard Virtual Intelligence system, along with extensive redundant backup and antiviral systems.
Comms and Sensors: Local and FTL comms arrays. Radar, LIDAR, infrared, multi-spectral, and additional other local area sensors systems, along with extensive FTL sensors.
High power artificial singularity for both artificial gravity generation and inertial dampening, allowing for 1G gravity under all but the most extreme conditions.
Background: Faced with an aging and inadequate fighting fleet, Earth humanity constructed the Monarch class in the ramp-up to the most recent Great War. These vessels served as advanced, fast battleships well suited to carrier escort duties, rapid border response, or direct ship-to-ship combat against enemy battleships and cruisers.
After the war, the York was purchased by eccentric multi trillionaire David Courtland, and the vessel found new purpose in defending civilians in war-torn areas from pirates.
IRL info. This digital SHIP was made in Bricklink’s Studio software from August 1st to August 11th, 2021. I did not originally plan to attempt to include it in SHIPtember, but it met the requirements for early month. Note that it uses all real piece colors that are available for sale on Bricklink. It is 100% connected, and should be reasonably stable in real life. Although it would require a display stand of some kind. The current pictures are WIP placeholders to show completed status of the build itself. Better renders will hopefully follow before whatever October picture deadline is decided on. Please do not use these early pictures in the poster if time remains, as I hope to provide better ones. Thank you for reading.)
KITT or K.I.T.T. is the short name of two fictional characters from the adventure franchise Knight Rider. While having the same acronym, the KITTs are two different entities: one known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which appeared in the original TV series Knight Rider.
During filming, KITT was voiced by a script assistant, with voice actors recording KITT's dialog later. David Hasselhoff and original series voice actor William Daniels first met each other six months after the series began filming. KITT's evil twin is KARR, whose name is an acronym of Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR was voiced first by Peter Cullen and later by Paul Frees in seasons one and three, respectively, of the NBC original TV series Knight Rider.
In the original Knight Rider series, the character of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was physically embodied as a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The "brain" of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, which is the centre of a "self-aware" cybernetic logic module. This allows KITT to think, learn, communicate and interact with humans. He is also capable of independent thought and action. He has an ego that is easy to bruise and displays a very sensitive, but kind and dryly humorous personality.
Sierra, a 261.3 TeraFLOP/s Dell system, is dedicated to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s unclassified Grand Challenge and Laboratory Directed Research and Development programs. Research areas include: bioscience; materials science; energy; astrophysics; and environment.
The Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory earned the top ranking on May 30 2022, as the world’s fastest on the 59th TOP500 list, with 1.1 exaflops of performance. The system is the first to achieve the level of computing performance known as exascale, a threshold of a quintillion calculations per second.
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.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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
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.
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.
So... just for kicks I was working on a COBRA style generic enemy, Skull Corps. This was originally going to be part of a set of "playsets" for their secret mountain hideaway on Skull Island. Time, work, life, and the desire to play with REAL Legos intervened. However, I did get a lot done on this. It slowly acquired parts of the other sets, such as the supercomputer from Dr. Claw's lab, and a cell from the dungeon. I was going to put a small version of the Indoctrination Center (where they brainwash new Skull Corps recruits) on the upper floor, but I didn't get to it.
One of two identical Cray XC40 clusters in ECMWF’s high-performance computing facility (HPCF).
Each cluster had 20 cabinets of compute nodes and 13 of storage and weighed more than 50 metric tonnes. The bulk of the system consisted of compute nodes with two Intel Xeon E5-2695 V4 “Broadwell” processors each with 18 cores.
•~3,600 nodes/130,000 compute cores per cluster
•Combined performance of the two clusters: ~8.5 petaflops peak and ~320 teraflops sustained performance
•Numbers 23 and 24 in the November 2016 Top 500 Supercomputers list
One of two identical Cray XC40 clusters in ECMWF’s high-performance computing facility (HPCF).
Each cluster had 20 cabinets of compute nodes and 13 of storage and weighed more than 50 metric tonnes. The bulk of the system consisted of compute nodes with two Intel Xeon E5-2695 V4 “Broadwell” processors each with 18 cores.
•~3,600 nodes/130,000 compute cores per cluster
•Combined performance of the two clusters: ~8.5 petaflops peak and ~320 teraflops sustained performance
•Numbers 23 and 24 in the November 2016 Top 500 Supercomputers list
Huwbot and the Brickset Databank Tower, an ultra-powerful Supercomputer that helps Huwbot with his work.
Yes, he really can stand up on that wheel!
A graffiti seen at Hamburgs railway station Dammtor under the bridge. It's from the same artist "marshal Arts" who created "Darth Trump" (see www.facebook.com/marshal.arts.streetart/)
The Terminator and Sarah Conner look at the Amazon speaker known as "Alexa" but labeled "Skynet". In the 80s nobody would have bought(!) a microphone for the living room which monitors everything said from anyone and copies this over world-wide network to some inter-connected supercomputers for analysis. This could be labeled as "Skynet" indeed.
Sarah Connor is wearing a T-shirt of the band "Public Enemy" which is rather funny on a side note.
I rejoice in what I carry in my heart
it overwelms what a man
Great Emancipation plans,
and public transport, clap your hands, Abraham
Oh religion, superstition,
Man's conditioned mysteries incomplete
thank you all. very very much. for everything <3
ahhh. i love trevor, ashley, morgan, meg, & cass. ahhhlot
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXA. i love you, pumpkin.
The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Data Exploration Theater features a 17- by 6-foot multi-screen visualization wall for engaging visitors and scientists with high-definition movies of simulation results. Here, the wall displays a 5-kilometer-resolution global simulation that captures numerous cloud types at groundbreaking fidelity. 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.
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.
The Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory earned the top ranking on May 30, 2022, as the world’s fastest on the 59th TOP500 list, with 1.1 exaflops of performance.
The system is the first to achieve the level of computing performance known as exascale, a threshold of a quintillion calculations per second.
For more information or additional images, please contact 202-586-5251.
www.flickr.com/photos/departmentofenergy/collections/7215...
EnergyTechnologyVisualsCollectionETVC@hq.doe.gov
So you're thinking to yourself, "Self, what I've really always wanted was a Gradius game that played like Starfox."
Well, self, you're in luck, because such a game does exist. It's called Solar Assault and it was released in arcades way back in the stone ages of 1997.
I had the good fortune of playing it once, and only once, at some random arcade I stumbled through back in college. I remember thinking at the time, "This looks like a Gradius game, but it's called Solar Assault, WTF?"
Flash forward to 2004. I had forgotten all about the game but had started messing around with emulators, and since I had just gotten a new computer (the one I recently replaced) I thought I'd see what it could do.
Turns out Solar Assault wasn't working for MAME back then, but a few years later it sort of worked, only not on my machine because it wasn't powerful enough.
Well I thought I'd see what my NEW machine could do, and wouldn't you know it? A four-core dual thread system can run it just fine. Now I just need to update MAME, because it turns out there's a new version that runs Solar Assault without the bugs that plagued it previously.
Who knew that all you need to emulate a 3D game from 1997 was a desktop that would be considered a supercomputer back in 1992? LOL.
The game runs sort of OK in MAME 0.119, but there's no sound and a lot of lost textures, plus as you can see they look really rough. But it's actually playable and not dog slow like on my old machine. Let me tell you, 3D options are a hoot. I'll update when I get the newer version of MAME running. For now, beddy-bye.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Bing Xu, co-founder of SenseTime at the Goldman Sachs Private Innovative Company Conference (PICC) in Las Vegas:
“AI is the key economic driver for next 20 years of economic growth!”
“We have the #1 AI supercomputer dedicated to Deep Learning with 15,000 GPUs, 157 PetaFLOPS. That is the weapons that we have."
"AI is the new engine for industry upgrades" — Chinese Government
SenseTime raised $2B in 2018 from Silverlake, Softbank and Alibaba as a private company. They raised $600M at a $3B valuation in April and then $700M at a $7B valuation from Softbank. “When Silverlake did the C+ round, Softbank paid attention. They were looking for an algorithm company and never found one until us.”
“We have 160 PhDs in AI area and 3000 staff, adding 200-300 per month. For the past three years the average revenue growth has been 400%/yr.”
I took a short video of his AI superpower claims.
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.
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.