China to Crack Supercomputer Top Ten List

jsse writes "ComputerWorld (Hong Kong) has an article about Chinese Academy of Sciences building a supercomputer which has been shown in benchmark tests to process up to 10 trillion floating-point operations per second (TFLOPS) and is expected to take a spot on the list of the world's ten most powerful supercomputers for the first time. The computer is a cluster of 2,560 Opteron 800 series processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) contained in 640 nodes of four processors each. AMD has announced the project last year when the cluster was building."

Hrmm

[acehole]

So what happened to that dragon cpu chip they were working on?

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

they're saving that one to be #1

Re:Hrmm

[eean]

From what I remember, they weren't planning those to be really powerful.

I know this one...

[El Camino SS]

The dragon CPU was in the Internet Cafes, but alas, all of those got shut down.

Re:Hrmm

[WindBourne]

but just ask yourself why the much-hyped Dragon CPU isn't being used.

The dragon is meant to be used in the same space that that dragonball and other embedded chips are being used. China is not really interested in building a few number of chips but large numbers of cheap chips. Then they can build up the industry. Think that Japan did with automobiles back in the 50's, and 60's.

But if you really think that the dragon should be in super computer space, then I would ask why no super computers based on dra

Use?

[IANAL(BIAILS)]

I glanced through the article quickly and I see that it doesn't mention what use the computer will be put to. For some reason, I doubt it will be used to model climate change... bets they want to use the cycles to crunch some nuclear weapons simulations?

Use?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well, why should the United States be the sole keeper of Weapons of Mass Destruction? History has shown that we aren't exactly the most trustworthy of these things. Just exactly what do you suppose they are developing at Fort Mead? Vaccines to save the world?

Re:Use?

[rayvd]

Huh? How the heck has history shown we're an untrustworthy keeper of these things? The fact that we used two to avert an extremely costly and bloody land invasion of the Japanese home island?

I don't seem to recall us using them on our own people or at the drop of a hat even when things turned for the worse in Vietnam.

I *do* recall the simple existence of them preventing war with the USSR and in the end, being partly responsible for the fall of that country when it couldn't keep up...

Sheesh...

Re:Use?

[jsebrech]

Huh? How the heck has history shown we're an untrustworthy keeper of these things? The fact that we used two to avert an extremely costly and bloody land invasion of the Japanese home island?

The use of nuclear weapons on hiroshima and nagasaki was tactically unnecessary, it did not decide the war, it only speeded up the ending of it. Especially the second bomb was unnecessary, since the japanese had gotten the message after the first one.

They could have also dropped the bombs on low-populated areas, but instead they dropped it on civilian cities, knowing full well that the destruction and loss of human life would be massive. And they dropped them without warning, to make sure loss of civilian life would be maximized.

This massive civilian massacre was a constant factor in WWII-era allied campaigns. Japan and Germany saw constant nighttime firebombing in the later stages of the war, designed to kill as much civilians as possible to destroy enemy morale. Ofcourse, since the allied forces won, the history books were written in such a way as to obfuscate this fact.

I *do* recall the simple existence of them preventing war with the USSR and in the end, being partly responsible for the fall of that country when it couldn't keep up...

Exactly. What kept the cold war from becoming hot was the fact that both sides had nuclear weapons. That's the theory of nuclear detente: if everyone has them, no one can use them.

Re:Use?

[mlyle]

The use of nuclear weapons on hiroshima and nagasaki was tactically unnecessary, it did not decide the war, it only speeded up the ending of it. Especially the second bomb was unnecessary, since the japanese had gotten the message after the first one.

Really? Allied projections for an island-by-island invasion of Japan involved literally millions of casualties of allied personnel and uninvolved civilians. And the Japanese military staged an unsuccessful coup [netcom.com] rather than allow Hirohito to surrender after

Re:Use?

[gnu-generation-one]

"Really? Allied projections for an island-by-island invasion of Japan involved literally millions of casualties of allied personnel and uninvolved civilians."

It always comes down to two extremes, doesn't it? If you don't do what I want, you'll have to take the complete other extreme and look how evil that is...

Why not drop the a-bomb in the sea. You're saying if we don't nuke a major city, the only other alternative is to hide the a-bomb and fight with sticks?

Re:Use?

[KarmaMB84]

There was no guarantee that the bombs (and they only had a few at the time) would explode properly so demonstrating them would've been a bad idea.

Why don't I hear the same arguments about FIREBOMBING major cities?

Re:Use?

[mlyle]

Well, given that the Japanese military attempted to prevent a surrender at all costs after both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that the surrender tapes almost weren't successfully broadcast due to actions by the Japanese military police forces against the Imperial Guard, I think it's reasonable to question whether dropping a nuke in the sea would have accomplished much. Indeed, there was little reaction at all to the Hiroshima device, nor to the Potsdam declaration before that.

And there were only 3 atomic we

Re:Use?

[shis-ka-bob]

That estimate is complete bullshit. The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated 38,000 causalities. The 'million' number was from revisionists wanting to justify Truman's decision.

We demanded 'unconditional' surrender. The Japanese had one condition: Let us keep our Emperor. We said no to that condition. After the Japanese had refused to surrender, Russia joined the Pacific war. We also decided that we were willing to allow the Emperor to remain as a 'figurehead'. If we had told the Japanese these two fact

Re:Use?

[elvum]

Hello? Last time I checked, the UK, France, Russia, Pakistan, India and I think China itself all had nukes. Not to mention the Israelis (probably). There's no question of the US being the "sole keeper" of such weapons, even if it wanted to be.

Re:Use?

[suyashs]

The Israelis have aprox. 88 nukes at their disposal.

Yes, there is a problem with China and nukes.

[El Camino SS]

Contrary to your "arm the world is fine" statement, let me counter your argument with a little known fact.

China is not exactly run by the people of China, moreso than many other countries that do have nuclear capability.

History has shown that when a country is controlled by one person or an elite few, the distance to the sword in any situation is shortened.

Democracies generally promote peace with the "hell no you're not taking my son!" argument.

Think about it.

Re:Yes, there is a problem with China and nukes.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

My point is, we are hardly the people to be preaching about non-proliferation. Our own bio / nuke programs continue to expand while we tell the world that they should give up these evil tools and embrace "world peace". Shouldn't we be leading by example? To me, it seems like just another example of the US saying that the rules don't apply to us.

Re:Use?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I don't believe the post to which you supplied said anything about the United States. Rather, it speculated that the new supercomputer would be used for nuclear weapons.

And I said, who are we (yes, not all Slashdotters are from the US, but most / many are in fact from the US) to tell China what to do with their supercomputer? Kettle, black, glass houses, and so forth...

Please.

[El Camino SS]

And I said, who are we (yes, not all Slashdotters are from the US, but most / many are in fact from the US) to tell China what to do with their supercomputer?
----


Yes. Trust them. They have such a good track record.

Kettle, black, glass houses, and so forth...


Tianemen square, bullets in protestors, missiles over Taiwan on election day, Falon Gong, and so forth...

Re:Please.

[imsabbel]

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Vietnam, and so on. MUCH more dead....

Re:Please.

[El Camino SS]

Strangely, those were wars. Fighting totalitarian regimes in every example.

My examples were things that the Chinese government was doing to ITS OWN CITIZENS.

Get your facts straight.

Re:Use?

[ctr2sprt]

Tu quoque [nizkor.org]. The fact that the US possesses and actively researches WMDs does not mean we can't criticize other countries who do. Even discounting different situations (dictatorship getting nukes vs. democracy getting nukes), at worst it only means that we are unable to live up to our own moral standards. It doesn't mean that our moral standards are invalid or that our criticisms are inappropriate.

Re:Use?

[GreyWolf3000]

I think the parent meant that, logically speaking, the US being a hypocrite has no bearing on the severity of the threat of a non-democracy developing WMD's.

We can gripe about U.S. foreign policy all we want, but we 'Merkins being "pig-headed" doesn't save the world when some rogue nation decides to ruin things for the rest of us.

If we allow the hipocracies of the US government to affect our perceptions of global security, we would be as guilty as those who cause *past tense* our extinction.

Re:Use?

[gnu-generation-one]

"And I said, who are we (yes, not all Slashdotters are from the US, but most / many are in fact from the US) to tell China what to do with their supercomputer? Kettle, black, glass houses, and so forth..."

And more interestingly, how many slashdotters are in America and using supercomputers at work to run nuclear weapons simulations?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Use?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

What you're gesturing about is Fort Dietrick where the Army's bio-weapons program isn't anymore.

Really. No more bio weapons at Fort Whatever? Sure, OK, I'll have to take your word for it. But the location is hardly the point. Call it Fort Secret Bio Lab, we still *are* in the business of developing bio weapons.

Re:Pax Americana

[Dun Malg]

Because in a civilized society, the population grants the government a monopoly on the use of force. Extended to the planet, America seems the natural choice. Extending a governmental system with a judiciary, an executive and a legistlative branch to the planet, you end up with the World Court, the United States, and the UN.
The US is the world's police force, the US has most of the guns. From a practical standpoint, why NOT grant them the monopoly on force, since they've (typically) shown respect for liber

Its a troll because it is countering a troll.

[El Camino SS]

Standard Anti-American slashdot a-hole tactic.

Re: surface points

[Gothmolly]

This has been discussed at great length here before on Slashdot.
And therefore, it must be true? Talk about an ad hominem argument.

History seems to indicate that you cannot.
So it does, or it does not?

The US has been in Afghanistan for all of 3 years, and Iraq for one. Regarding Korea and Vietnam, define "genuine peace"?
Point me to an institution or country which has done a better job, and I'll consider conceding the point, based on the cogency and truth of your argument.

Re:Use?

[mslinux]

It will be used to calculate, measure and to build mathematical models... like all super-computers. It's just a tool, what exactly they decide to calculate isn't important.

Math is agnostic, it doesn't care if one is attempting to measure the fallout radius of a hydrogen bomb or what percentage of the earth's surface is water.

"If you can measure what you speak of and express it by a number, you know something about your subject; but if you cannot, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory." --Kelvin

Re:Use?

[tehanu]

The US does a lot of nuclear weapon simulations as well. So does France and any other country with nuclear weapon capability. I imagine the US is doing even more now as it is developing new types of mini-nukes which the government is seriously talking about deploying in conventional warfare. So if you want to cast stones...

Anyway, one idea is that the more computer simulations you do, the fewer real tests you have to do. So increased computer simulations may be beneficial for the minorities and rural Han Chinese living in the remote areas that they do the tests in. Of course it would be best to reduce development on nuclear weapons entirely but I don't see that happening in the present climate anytime soon. When even the leader of the free world is out there advocating the development of new nuclear weapons and uses loopholes in treaties to develop them, what exactly do you think the leaders of the paranoid and not-so-free world will do?

Re:Use?

[Zork the Almighty]

They are probably using it for web-filtering :)

While that is pretty fast...

[Digitus1337]

I think maybe we should hold off on asking it "why 42?"

Worlds fastest internet filter

[ReeferCpe]

This is probably the intended use :)

But why on earth

[caston]

Would the Chinese need a computer capable of running Longhorn?

Oh well, More power to them!

What would you call a cluster of Longhorns?

[shis-ka-bob]

Herd of Longhorns?

Sure! I've heard of Longhorns

No, no, no! A Longhorn herd

Don't be rediculous, Microsoft is writing Longhorn and Stallman is writing HURD, how could we ever have a Longhorn/Hurd? How would it be licensed? What would it run?

Perhaps mono really is a Communist plot!

Saving You Time

[tirefire]

[Insert unecessary comparison between this and the G5 cluster at Virginia Tech].

i see...

[abscondment]

The computer's being created by Dawning Information Industry Co. (US Site) [dawningusa.com].

According to their company profile [dawningusa.com],

Dawning is the unique Chinese high-tech company which can manufacture not only low end PC server worth $1,200 but also high end MPP system worth millions USD.

They seem to serve a lot of different customers [dawningusa.com], but I have a feeling the government will be making use of this baby.

I wonder what kneejerk reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

will happen from our politicians in the US. My understanding is that the new cluster being built at Oak Ridge is really intended to somewhat compete with the Earth Simulator cluster in Japan. Granted, I don't think it is intended to surpass it but still I just get the feeling that a lot of the supercomputer projects being supported by Congress are political in nature and not really scientific. Now that the Chinese will possibly enter the top 10, that should get the politicos all riled up.

Re:I wonder what kneejerk reaction

[aardvarkjoe]

Whether or not the reason for building a supercomputer was political, the use is scientific. I think that we can use as many political excuses as possible to fund science.

w00t!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the chinese can caluclate how many communists it really takes to screw in a lightbulb....

(my estimate is the entire chinese population, because if only one person screws it in, then that's just not sharing with others, is it?)

China to Crack Supercomputer Top Ten List

[c++]

Man, I can't stand it when that list goes down from beeing hax0red...

In other unrelated news

[Anonymous Coward]

global warming has significantly increased

USA?

[John Seminal]

Does anyone know what the list of top 10 is? I wonder how many of the top 10 supercomputers are in the USA, and how the Virginia Tech G4 cluster ranks.

Also, a side note. How much extra computing "power" is gained by adding an extra machine to a cluster? For example, I have about 7 or 8 pentiums (most are 166's, there is a 133 and a 200) sitting on the floor collecting dust. If I hooked them all up together, what would the usefulness be? Could I compile programs quicker? Would a cluster make a good web server, jps server? I know my PIII500 can drag with tomcat at times when crunching jsp.

I am glad china is investing money in technology. With all the people they have living there, they could become a major technolohy hub. Look at what Japan did in the 1980's with manufacturing. Imagine all the cheap(er) products we could have on the market. It all starts with R&D. Even the old "star wars" spending from the 1980's has proven useful in new products in ways not imagined back then.

Re:USA?

[imsabbel]

Look at top500.org
There is a new list comming the next few weeks.

Your 7-8 pentiums alone could do some useful stuff as a cluster. Not much, but a little. A compile farm COULD be possible (never done it, so i dont know, but if they have enough ram why not, as long as you have a better machine to do the linking/ect)

But adding them to an existing cluster of faster machines would slow the whole stuff down (more communication cost lowering the total efficiency more than outweights the computing power of the ne

Re:USA?

[chamblah]

Does anyone know what the list of top 10 is?

Here [top500.org] is the current list of 500, last updated in November of '03.

Re:USA?

[foidulus]

Several errors in your post I would like to point out:
I wonder how many of the top 10 supercomputers are in the USA, and how the Virginia Tech G4 cluster ranks.
It's a G5 cluster first of all, and it ranks third(IIRC the biology department wants to use it)
Also, a side note. How much extra computing "power" is gained by adding an extra machine to a cluster? For example, I have about 7 or 8 pentiums (most are 166's, there is a 133 and a 200) sitting on the floor collecting dust. If I hooked them all up tog

Top 10 Summary

[thakadu]

The countries from top 10 are: 1. Japan 2. USA 3. USA 4. USA 5. USA 6. USA 7. USA 8. USA 9. USA 10. USA and the top 10 countries in the list with (highest rank) are: 1. Japan (1) 2. USA (2) 3. China (14) 4. France (15) 5. UK (16) 6. South Korea (22) 7. Canada (29) 8. Germany (31) 9. Netherlands (41) 10. New Zealand (44)

Top 10 *Known*

[brunes69]

It would not suprise me in the lest to find out that the NSA always maintains a supercomputer al least 2x as fast as the fastest "publically" listed supercomputer.

Re:USA?

[Dun Malg]

Also, a side note. How much extra computing "power" is gained by adding an extra machine to a cluster?

Depends on how big the cluster already is. Are you adding one machine to a cluster of 6, or a cluster of 600?

For example, I have about 7 or 8 pentiums (most are 166's, there is a 133 and a 200) sitting on the floor collecting dust. If I hooked them all up together, what would the usefulness be?

Practically none. Buy a single 2.4GHZ Celeron box off eBay for $200 and you'll get nore out of it.

Could I c

Re:USA?

[damiam]

No. Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear.

Compiling parallelizes quite well. See distcc and XCode/Rendezvous.

Re:USA?

[Dun Malg]

No. Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear.

Compiling parallelizes quite well. See distcc and XCode/Rendezvous.

I stand corrected. I was thinking along the lines of parallelizing the compilation of a single module. I hadn't really considered compiling multiple parts being compiled and then linked-- duh. Still, he'd probably be better off compiling on a single 500mhz machine than splitting it up across several old 133 or 166mhz boxes, considering the likely diffe

Re:USA?

[sql*kitten]

Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear.

Linking is linear; you could compile C in as many parallel tasks as you have source files. Java compiles can be parellelized quite a bit too, particularly if your code makes heavy use of Class.forName(). I do this a lot, tho' quite gratuitously; I've got 4 CPUs so I use 'em, but with the size of projects I work on and the speed of even a single processor and a modern javac, it doesn't really make a vast amount of differen

Re:USA?

[burns210]

"No. Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear. Besides, it's not like you hook up 8 machines to a 10/100 switch, start up a few "cluster daemons", and end up with a single virtual machine."

That, would be AWESOME, though.

"No. Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear."

Not that you are wrong, but Apple has a technology built into their development suite(which comes free with os X), that lets you use their rondevous networkin

Re:USA?

[randombit]

No. Clusters are only good for doing tasks that "parallelize". Compiling is too linear.

Compiling a single file is. But most software has more than one file, and you can compile different files on different machines. Check out distcc [samba.org].

Of course, even using distcc, a single low-end Athlon will be 10x faster than all of those boxes combined, and use up a lot less electricity as well. So it's not exactly a useful excercise. Interesting, perhaps.

Re:USA?

[silas_moeckel]

There are a lot of types of clusters. You could put those 8 boxes together in a shared something cluster and make a set of webservers that not faster than any single box but is a lot more reliable. The TCO is all wrong for it you would be better off getting a couple modern PC's and making an active active cluster out of them as it will be cheaper to power and have a lot more ram. A simple shared nothing cluster can make compiling something big like a kernel faster than a single machine but again a single

Re:USA?

[scrytch]

> Could I compile programs quicker? Would a cluster make a good web server, jps server? I know my PIII500 can drag with tomcat at times when crunching jsp.

You could compile the linux kernel in two seconds if you used distcc, but your game of quake would have average frame rates, and wouldn't take much advantage of the parallelism at all. Any individual program still has latency bottlenecks that don't parallelize. And since it's busy crunching numbers at top speed, it doesn't have great interactive res

Re:USA?

[burns210]

The publicly posted LIST [top500.org] would be a good place to start. The Virginia Tech computer ranks third.

So much for the supercomputer export ban :P

[autopr0n]

I take it china's no longer on the list of countries we're not allowed to sell supercomputers too.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Update on DARPA's petaflop efforts

[mpthompson]

For those interested this article [businessweek.com] from BusinessWeek has an update on DARPA's goal of funding the building of a petaflop (quadillions of calcuations a second) computer. This and other BusinessWeek articles indicate that while Asia may have the lead on the US now, the US will likely take back the leadership position by the end of the decade.

Re:Interesting

[acxr is wasted]

If they could just smooth over the human rights people

As you can see, [peking.org] this is nothing new for China.

Re:Interesting

[KarmaMB84]

I believe Peking was the traditional spelling for Beijing before they changed it. A lot of things used to be spelled different before the switch.

Re:Interesting

[turgid]

Since when does "exceedingly liberal"==Communist?

Re:Interesting

[tehanu]

The best part is that in Australia, the "Liberal" party is the mainstream *conservative* ie. right-wing party. John Howard our PM, who is ideological and personal best buddies with your President Bush (eg. he just banned gay marriage) is the leader of the Liberal party. Which I think just blows the contention that liberal==left-wing.

Re:Interesting

[daft_one]

Yeah, Australia's always got things wrong. I hear your toilet water doesn't even swirl the right way.

Re:Interesting

[sql*kitten]

Which I think just blows the contention that liberal==left-wing

The US uses "liberal" to mean "permissive" or "progressive"; the rest of the world uses it to mean what Americans would call "classically liberal". In the Australian sense, "liberal" means personal freedom and minimum state intervention.

Re:Interesting

[nyseal]

I know; left wing=gay.

Re:Interesting

[Servo]

"exceedingly liberal" !=Communist

communist principles=="exceedingly liberal"

Re:Interesting

[El Camino SS]

Since when does "exceedingly liberal"==Communist?


Since when we now strike first for peace.
Since when our oldest international ally (France) became our biggest enemy.
Since when disagreeing with your government makes you a traitor.
Since one old sarin gas shell becomes a nation killer... and proof of WMD.
And especially since the media has become "fair and balanced."

Or the short answer:

Since when does "exceedingly liberal"==Communist?

Oh, about since late November 2004.

Re:Interesting

[ameoba]

The whole liberal/conservative thing is kinda ambiguous, at least in relation to American politics.

Libertarians actually hold very right-wing/conservative views; the only way they get called liberals is because they don't think the government should get in the way of much of anything.

Re:Interesting

[Dun Malg]

Libertarians actually hold very right-wing/conservative views;

Actually, I'd say Libertarians hold views on certain high-profile topics that are most commonly associated with right-wing conservatives (e.g. right to bear arms, the free market, and small government). The fact that right-wing conservatives don't actually stand for those things so much anymore and really just pay them lip-service occasinally is usually overlooked.

the only way they get called liberals is because they don't think the government

Re:Interesting

[geekee]

"Libertarians actually hold very right-wing/conservative views; the only way they get called liberals is because they don't think the government should get in the way of much of anything."

Wrong, liberals believe the govt. should control every aspect of your life. That's why liberals believe in welfare, social security, socialized health care, etc. Libertarians do believe in smaller govt., which is why they oppose the above social programs. Liberals, however, believe in big govt.

Re:Interesting

[geekee]

" extreme liberalism would be libertarians, communist implies authoriatian."

No libertarianism is only socially liberal, i.e. they don't believe in laws that restrict individual rights. Libertarian's are economically conservative, believing in a small govt. whose only job is to make and enforce laws to protect individual rights. They believe in free trade. They don't believe in welfare, social security, antitrust laws, public utilities, or even public roads or schools.

Re:Interesting

[a whoabot]

True communism is actually the complete lack of state. Hence the name: the people live in a socially bound community. Stalinism may have confused this, because Stalin completely sidetracked the socialist project in what was essentially greed, and the movement towards communism in Russia regressed. Just because countries have been labelled communistic and were totalitarian, doesn't mean the concept of communism is actually dictatorial. As you may say, please look up communism in a dictionary, or better, an e

Re:Interesting

[geekee]

Communism is a misguided philsophy that believe the welfare of the collective is more important than basic rights of individuals, such as the right to own property.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

at least they are free of Warcrimes [google.com] unlike the USA (no matter how much rummy bleats)

do you see how much damage the current administration has done ?, human rights violations by USA was 5 years ago unthinkable, now they are in the same club as those "communist" countries, nice company

the damage done to USA's credibility will take 100's of years to repair , look how long slavery took. you lost the terrorists won and what was a free country has become a facist theocracy that tortures, murders and treats huma

Re:Interesting

[dk.r*nger]

at least they are free of Warcrimes unlike the USA

Sure, why go to war when you have a billion of your own people to slaughter brutally? [hrw.org]

There are no absolutes in this game, but you can't say that China is better than the US, just because they don't have a few very horrible incidents that are currently blown up in the media.

US is considered a resonable country, human rights wise. China is not even close to that yet. Yes, getting better, but it is still only 15 years ago the military opened fire on civi

Re:Interesting

[Dun Malg]

the damage done to USA's credibility will take 100's of years to repair

If only that were true. On the scale of bad things that people do to one another, the Abu Ghraib incidents are such small potatoes that, 10 years from now, you won't be able to find any significant number of people who'll cite the Abu Ghraib torture as even one of the top ten reasons they hate the US.

As for the UN, it's hard to take anything they say seriously when they selected Libya to chair the United Nations Commission on Human R

Re:Interesting

[Dun Malg]

There seems to be a mistake in your comment, let me correct it for you [i]If only that were true. On the scale of bad things that [/i]the US does to others[i], the Abu Ghraib incidents are such small potatoes that, 10 years from now, you won't be able to find any significant number of people who'll cite the Abu Ghraib torture as even one of the top ten reasons they hate the US.[/i]

No, that's not a mistake. Take a look around [hrw.org], man. Man's inhumanity to man is not the sole province of the US, nor is the US e

Re:Interesting

[netsharc]

I don't think you can get away with Abu Ghraib that easily. For one thing, it's another "evidence" for those who hate the US that it really is an evil country. People may forget about Abu Ghraib, but its effects -- the impression that these white guys with their guns and tanks are there to colonialize and turn the citizens into animals -- will remain there. And for sure the extremists will use these pictures in their propaganda to recruit impressionable minds, heck impressionable? Who won't be pissed off wh

Re:Interesting

[DNS-and-BIND]

Free of warcrimes? What?

*AHEM* Tibet *AHEM*.

You also might want to read up on the Chinese treatment of POWs during the Korean Conflict. Made the Iraqi prison look like a Sunday School.

Re:Interesting

[nyseal]

Wow....that was a lot of words.

Re:Interesting

[nyseal]

Peace and dignity; now THERE'S a new one.

LOL

[Kjella]

Seriously though, most countries don't have a very clean record, including China. Being involved in so many conflicts around the world, the US is hardly at the bottom of the barrel despite some incidents. What's really hurt the US is that they've been sanctimonious [reference.com].

Being a thug and silently suppressing that is in many ways better than being a thug and claiming to be a saint. That's what hit the US full force. Compared to most countries of the world, the US is still a quite civilized one. But I don't think

Re:Interesting

[pipingguy]

...the terrorists won and what was a free country has become a facist theocracy...

troll v.,n. To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies"; which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling";, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite.

The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, whil

not true

[zogger]

Some spooks and US special forces and their allies, the "northern alliance" opium growers, killed 3,000 prisoners of war in afghanistan by locking them in almost air tight shipping containers and leaving them sit in the hot sun for days, then machine gunned whomever lived through it. It's on google, you can go find it yourself. There's some war crimes researchers investigating it now, digging up the mass graves, etc.

If you really look, you can find a long string of abuses by the US military going all the

Re:Interesting

[afidel]

China was never really communist, and they aren't even playing at it anymore. Witness the recent vote by the parliment [bbc.co.uk] to reinstate private property rights and which gives some basic human rights back to the people. China is already such a huge economic engine that it has raised world steel prices by between 50 and 100% since the beginning of this year. Other metals such as Zinc have seen nearly 200% rises! The scary part for the developed countries is that concievably China could grow at this rate for 100

Re:Interesting

[neema]

"China was never really communist, and they aren't even playing at it anymore."

And this, to a large degree, where the Sino-Soviet split came from. While the Soviet Union claimed that it had already gotten past capitalism and was now working from socialism to communism, China never made this claim. Ideologically, they claimed that class struggle was to continue in China and that there would be a ruling class and an antagonistic serving class, which the Soviet Union claimed was impossible after revolution.

Re:Interesting

[john82]

China keeps showing more and more signs that it wants to be a big player in the world despite being communist. If they could just smooth over the human rights people (I suppose they should actually improve the human rights thing in general), they could very well become a very important figure in the world economy (not that they're not already).

China has the largest population on the planet with 1.3+ Billion people. The USA, including all states, protectorates, territories and New Jersey, is not quite 300 million (2000 census). That would make China four times the size in population. But you don't think they're very important.

News Flash: With only the most minor of exceptions, the governments of the world obviously don't care about China's human rights policies. Even the US, under the Clinton administration, gave in. Why? Because China already IS an economic power.

Do you stand in front of mountain and insist that it come to you? Think of economic power in terms of kinetic energy. KE = 0.5 * mass * velocity^2. Right now, China's economy doesn't have much velocity, but it sure as hell has mass. Let's apply that to the most fundamental priciple of economics: Supply and Demand. When demand rises while supply stays the same or goes down, price rises. China is untapped demand potential. That demand potential is unmatched. And as that demand changes from potential to realized, we'll all pay more ... for everything.

Superpower /= human rights

[tehanu]

Human rights are not necessary to become a superpower. All superpowers have become superpowers because of force of arms and money eg. Athens (amongst the Greeks), the Romans, the Chinese in most of Asia's recorded history, the Spanish in their day, the British Empire, the USSR, the Ottoman Empire and the US are/were superpowers because at the height of their power they were extremely strong *militarily* and economically (though the two are linked). Sometimes human rights were developed, sometimes not. In

TERRIBLY INNACURRATE.

[El Camino SS]

In some other ways, seems like China has gone from exceedingly liberal (Communist) to more moderate, while the US is still that funny mix of liberal and right wing type of ideas.


Damn you America! Damn you and your mix of ideas!

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The US doesn't want to annex its nearest neighbor by force or failing that, bomb them into submission.

Iraq.

The US isn't propping up Stalinist dictatorships that want nukes.

G. W. Bush already has nukes, and is working on taking all your freedoms. And how many "Stalinist dictatorships" has the U.S. put in power over the years? Castro? Sadam (sp?)?

The US has more than one political party.

Two is not much bigger than one. How different are they really? They are mostly the same except for a few distinguishing details. If a third party wanted to run, how long would it take for them to have a realistic shot?

The US doesn't arrest people in peaceful demonstrations and stick them in prison camps for 10 years at a time.

Prisoners from Afganistan. These are classified as "non-combatants" by the U.S. government. They are held with no trial, and are not POWs. And let's not forget about "free Kevin," held for (was it) 4 years without trial, and the only reason that he got out was because he agreed to a plea bargain imposed by the prosecutor.

The US doesn't think it owns Tibet.

Iraq.

The US doesn't tell the religious to register with the state or else.

Any of the government databases that track "undesirables"; members of the comunist party (or is that still illegal?), people of mid-east descent....

Re:Interesting

[geekee]

"I think due to the redefinition of superpower as "United States as the world's only superpower", it probably refers to the ability to forcefully remove sovereignty and control resources, to conduct human rights abuses of its own with impunity. In other words, they are not answerable to anyone."

except US voters

Re:Why 800's?

[bucky0]

Looking over here at pricewatch.com, there is no such thing as a 400. 8way systems are hard because of all the HT interconnects that are involved.

Re:Why 800's?

[JJJ_NL]

400 don't exist. There are only 1xx, 2xx and 8xx.

Re:Why 800's?

[Wesley Felter]

As others said, there are no Opteron 4xxs. Also, all Opterons are the same, so the cost to manufacture them is the same. This is why AMD was able to magically cut prices on the 8xxs by 43% recently.

Re:Why 800's?

[Wesley Felter]

The number of enabled Hypertransport links varies, but they all have three on the die.

Re:Is it really a chinese super computer?

[gears5665]

Yeah....but all the chips were made at AMDs CHINA plant.