Currently, the world's most powerful supercomputers can ramp up to more than a thousand trillion operations per second, or a petaflop. But computing power is not growing as fast as it has in the past. On Monday, the June 2015 listing of the Top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world revealed the beginnings of a plateau in performance growth.
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The development rate began tapering off around 2008. Between 2010 and 2013, aggregate increases ranged between 26 percent and 66 percent. And on this June's list, there was a mere 17 percent increase from last November.
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Despite the slowdown, many computational scientists expect performance to reach exascale, or more than a billion billion operations per second, by 2020.
Hmm, if they reach exascale computing will the weatherman finally be able to predict if it's going to rain this afternoon? Because he sucks at that now.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:31AM
The Chinese would have added nodes sooner if it weren't for the recent and wrongheaded export ban to their supercomputing centers. ... we did it because Tianhe is used for simulating nuclear weapons and explosions... just as our Department of Energy supercomputers do.
how is trying to slow the advancement of nuclear weaponry wrongheaded? do you think anyone should have more deadly nuclear weapons?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:47AM
That's because you are dumb. Imagine yourself sitting next to North Korea (Pakistan, Israel, etc.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by http on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:49AM
It's not wrong headed, but it also is absolutely not what's intended, or happening. It's a hypocritical excuse, as NRL still operates, and an irrelevant excuse, as China is boosting its domestic manufacture.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:35AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:48AM
It's not the intent that's wrongheaded, it's the measure. It is wrongheaded in the same way as it is wrongheaded to try to stop a flood by setting the area you want to protect on fire, on the theory that the fire will stop the water.