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posted by janrinok on Friday November 22, @07:43PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

When Cray Computing, a supercomputer manufacturer acquired by HP in 2019, announced that it would build El Capitan it expected the computer to reach a peak performance of 1.5 exaflops. Today, the 64th edition of the TOP500 — a long-running ranking of the world's non-distributed supercomputers — was published, and El Capitan not only exceeded that forecast by clocking 1.742 exaflops, but has claimed the title as the most powerful supercomputer in the world right now.

El Capitan is only the third “exascale” computer, meaning it can perform more than a quintillion calculations in a second. The other two, called Frontier and Aurora, claim the second and third place slots on the TOP500 now. Unsurprisingly, all of these massive machines live within government research facilities: El Capitan is housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Frontier is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory claims Aurora. Cray had a hand in all three systems.

El Capitan has more than 11 million combined CPU and GPU cores based on AMD 4th-gen EPYC processors. These 24-core processors are rated at 1.8GHz each and have AMD Instinct M1300A APUs. It's also relatively efficient, as such systems go, squeezing out an estimated 58.89 Gigaflops per watt.

If you’re wondering what El Capitan is built for, the answer is addressing nuclear stockpile safety, but it can also be used for nuclear counterterrorism. Being more powerful than anticipated, it’s likely to occupy the throne for a long while before another exascale computer overtakes it.


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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Friday November 22, @10:23PM (3 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 22, @10:23PM (#1382910) Journal

    It might have something to do with the complicated mix of isotopes in the warheads, how they decay over time (how the elements transmute into other elements) and the implications that has for the radiation emitted (and therefore structural integrity of the weapon) and then for the prediction as to what will happen if it ever needs to be detonated in anger.

    Then there's the consideration about what might happen if those changes made it easier to accidentally detonate? I doubt it, I'm not an expert but this is just thinking out loud.

    Then there's the consideration of how to dispose of it after its useful life. That will all depend on the mix of isotopes. Again, I'm not an expert.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hopdevil on Friday November 22, @11:57PM (2 children)

    by hopdevil (3356) on Friday November 22, @11:57PM (#1382921) Journal

    From what I can tell after very basic research it seems more about "performance" than safety. I think the US doesn't test nukes, they simulate.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday November 23, @12:07PM (1 child)

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 23, @12:07PM (#1382975) Journal

      Ah, yes, the safety of it being a credible deterrent, i.e. it'll go off properly when used.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday November 23, @12:46PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 23, @12:46PM (#1382981) Journal

        Ah, yes, the safety of it being a credible deterrent, i.e. it'll go off properly when used.

        That is the number one use of nuclear weapons. While a certain amount of uncertainty is probably a good thing (to dial back strategies of brinkmanship), too much generates all kinds of risks. For example, use it or lose it, or starting up real nuclear tests. To add to the latter, I wouldn't be surprised if Russia starts up nuclear tests at some point in the near future because their military has serious corruption and quality control issues that probably have leaked into their nuclear weapons readiness.