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IBM Hardware Science

IBM Retakes Fastest Supercomputer Title 275

Posted by michael from the more-power dept.
dshaw858 writes "BBC News reports that IBM has unveiled its new Blue Gene/L machine. The Blue Gene project already has two of the top ten supercomputers in the world. Big news for IBM! I wonder what great things they can calculate in just seconds now... maybe I should get a stronger PGP key."
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IBM Retakes Fastest Supercomputer Title More

IBM Retakes Fastest Supercomputer Title

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  • Don't worry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <fireang3l.hotmail@com> on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:08AM (#10745003) Homepage
    "IBM and its partners are currently exploring a growing list of applications including hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, climate modeling and financial modeling."

    So no PGP key cracking. At least officially.

    I wonder how the Fold@Home total CPU power compare to this in terms of percentage?

    • Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Informative)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:23AM (#10745058) Homepage Journal
      So no PGP key cracking. At least officially.

      You really need something more than just a really fast/powerful computer to do PGP cracking. You're going to need something that can help you get your fingernails under the problem, because even this machine couldn't brute force PGP keys. There has been some papers written on theoretical weaknesses in RSA that, given a custom built machine, could be exploited. This is not a custom built RSA cracker. It may have enough raw power to make up for that of course, and that means you might manage 1024 bit RSA cracking if you are determined. Unfortunately any sane PGP/GPG users are using Diffie-Hellman/El-Gamal rather than RSA as their public key system, and for now there aren't any similar attacks for the discrete log problem as there are for factoring.

      Your paranoia is misplaced. You should be worried that the NSA has come up with a serious break in RSA and Diffie-Hellman schemes that let them be cracked by a nice ordinary supercomputer, rather than worried about computer power overtaking key size. Most key sizes are chosen to have a fairly long lifespan even with massive increases in computing power. You aren't going to brute force 128bit symmetric systems any time soon, no matter how much computing power you stack up against it. No, the fear is in breaks to the encryption scheme.

      Jedidiah.

      • Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)

        by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:29AM (#10745077) Homepage
        If people want your key so bad they will build a supercomputer this big to crack it, you have plenty other things to worry about.

        • Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @06:15AM (#10745704)
          Good point.

          What would you do - sink a few hundred million in building a supercomputer to crack some guy's PGP key, or kidnap him, hold a gun to his head and ask for the passphrase?

          You'd build the computer if it was imperative that the guy not know you'd cracked his encryption, or if you wanted to do it on a large scale. If it's just one or two guys, and secrecy isn't necessarily an issue, there are other ways...

          • Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)

            by Gil-galad55 ( 707960 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @06:19AM (#10745716)
            As my number theory prof once famously said, "There are easier ways of finding out secrets than factoring large primes."

            Well, I thought it was funny!

            • " As my number theory prof once famously said, "There are easier ways of finding out secrets than factoring large primes."

              Nitpick: Factoring primes eh?

              The technical term for one such method is rubber-hose cryptanalysis [wikipedia.org]..

              I was a bit relieved to find out that, according to a book (Ross Anderson's Security Engineering I think) I've read, the implied method is slapping a rubber hose against the subject's feet.. I was worried about more awful forms of rubber hose application to the human body.

              I suppose t

        • "If people want your key so bad they will build a supercomputer this big to crack it, you have plenty other things to worry about."

          If somebody actually gained access to one of these machines for that specific purpose, I'd just hand them the key and say "You win!"
      • Hmm.

        But when do you think distributed.net will have a BlueGene/L port?

      • Re:Don't worry (Score:2, Interesting)

        by fatphil ( 181876 )
        How can something that says "this machine couldn't brute force PGP keys." and "that means you might manage 1024 bit RSA cracking if you are determined" get moderated to +5?

        You're gibbering, sir. You say one thing and then the opposite.

        No-one "brute forces" PGP keys, that's not how you crack them. Exactly how you crack them depends on what the underlying algorithm is, it's either GNFS factoring or discrete logarithm, but _neither_ is brute force. So your first point is wrong.

        With current algorithms, 1024

    • Just remember (Score:5, Funny)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:24AM (#10745064) Homepage
      Don't mess with people who measure their server power in acres. :p

    • Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Interesting)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:35AM (#10745092) Journal
      Financial Modelling _is_ a big thing. I've worked on modelling stock and economic data using game theory and various analytic methods -- it's not as simple as that.

      There's a lot of patterns, and a hell lot of data processing to be do.

      However, that said, financial data modelling is not something which I think can be cracked using brute-force power. Although there has been a lot of fundamental progress in terms of using OR and GT algorithms and the like, it hasn't really had that "big breakthrough" to fundamentally determine the basis of financial data and market behaviour, and perhaps we never will.

      Ofcourse, as always hope springs eternal - but that would also make markets a whole lot deterministic and bring about some serious differences in the way business is done.
      • In this business, more than others, Gut feeling plays a leading role.

        Financial Data Modelling is a fine idea, but the whole thing boils down to human psyche - and unless someone comes up with a perfect AI - one that is one step ahead in psycho term than human, - be it GT or OR or whatever else, market trend is very much based on butterfly effect + herd instinct + stochastic resonance with a whole lot of chaos effects thrown in.

        That is why it's so dynamic !
        • Absolutely.

          That's why a lot of these systems use such things as socio-cultural influences, press and media data and the like.

          Unfortunately, the stock market is an area that is an ecosystem of its own -- preys and victims -- and therefore, predicting that is almost as hard as predicting human behaviour.

          And ofcourse, the only reason the economies _thrive_ is because of the chaos - everyone would like to believe that they can leverage it to make a profit for themselves. :-)

          And the best part is, everyone ca
          • an ecosystem of its own -- preys and victims...And the best part is, everyone can, if they played their cards carefully enough.
            how can everyone be making money? you already said there are preys & victims, and people have to be making that money from somewhere
            • Everyone does not refer to the investor. It refers to all the brokerage, exchanges and clearing houses involved in the trade. They all will make money under an 'ideal' system, the trader isn't a factor.
            • Wealth is usually created not stolen. There isnt an absolute limit on the amount of money or products in an economy and so it doesn't have to be based on "victims" and "predators".

              Not to say that there aren't a lot of thieves on wall street but they generally are not the ones creating the wealth, just pooling money for others to create wealth with.
        • " market trend is very much based on butterfly effect + herd instinct + stochastic resonance with a whole lot of chaos effects thrown in."

          Suddenly, a bunch of monkeys find work...
      • Ofcourse, as always hope springs eternal - but that would also make markets a whole lot deterministic and bring about some serious differences in the way business is done.

        But hey, that'd immediately change the markets, so you'd probably need a new model.

        I don't believe that predicting the markets on the big scale is ever possible, simply because the predictions affect the system. You would have to predict how your predictions affect the system, and if that was public, then how the predictions on effects

    • Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Duncan3 ( 10537 )
      I wonder how the Fold@Home total CPU power compare to this in terms of percentage?

      Folding@home has almost 3x the FLOPS, but we're all on the same side here. Slightly different problems can be tackled when you have local bandwidth.

      Also keep in mind that Folding@home is not one project, but dozens of projects sharing the same CPU pool.

      Years to go before we figure out how folding really happens...

  • Bah (Score:5, Funny)

    by zaxios ( 776027 ) <zaxios@gmail.com> on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:08AM (#10745006) Journal
    IBM Retakes Fastest Supercomputer Title

    If their supercomputers really were that fast, they would have taken the title back earlier.

  • Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:09AM (#10745011) Homepage
    So, IBM is taking the "Fastest Supercomputer" title away from NEC's Earth Simulator. How can NEC stand for this obvious theft of intellectual property? I sense a lawsuit brewing...

  • "has two of the top ten supercomputers" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:11AM (#10745017)
    Ah...

    Must be those 2 guys I always see playing Quake with 1ms pings.

  • What about SGI? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by enigma32 ( 128601 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:13AM (#10745029)
    I recently read that SGI was to be claiming the world's most powerful supercomputer record from the Earth Simluator...

    Does this mean that IBM leapfrogged SGI or does this mean that the SGI machine (to be built for NASA) wasn't all that exciting?

    http://www.sgi.com/features/2004/oct/columbia/

    • Re:What about SGI? (Score:2, Informative)

      by LnxAddct ( 679316 )
      It means that the SGI announcement was of theoretical performance. In theory it is the fastest machine on earth... they are in the process of verifying that with tests right now. Once its proven you'll see the title taken by SGI again. Then the Earth Simulator will be 3rd on the list.
      Regards,
      steve

    • Re:What about SGI? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There will always be a competitor claiming the fastest supercomputer. It's always a game of leapfrog.

      The rankings used in supercomputing measure very specific benchmarks and have very specific deadlines.

      In this case, SGI has a computer reportedly faster than Blue Gene/L, but it is neither 1) in production by the deadline nor 2) independently verified results.

      Sure, they might do this, but by then the next supercomputer will shame SGI's new baby. Like I said, leapfrog.

      Rankings are all about a fairly arbit

    • Re:What about SGI? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, it just means that IBM (this time, at least) are full of PR-shit. The supercomputer they're talking about has one big difference from NASA's new system - the IBM box hasn't even left development yet, whereas the SGI system has been shipped and installed at a paying customer's site.

      Need proof? Here's one way you could go about getting it:

      (you) Hi IBM, I'm thinking of buying a BlueGene system for my lab, but I'm wondering - what operating system can I install on it?
      (IBM) It runs Linux!
      (you) But I looked

      • (you) Oh okay, no problem. Where can I get the source?

        (IBM) When you purchase (and take delivery of) the system, we'll be happy to give you the source upon request. Of course, there's nothing in the GPL that requires that we give source to everyone! Only to those who purchase and take delivery of our binaries.
    • "Does this mean that IBM leapfrogged SGI or does this mean that the SGI machine (to be built for NASA) wasn't all that exciting?"

      That depends: Are we talking today or yesterday?

  • How 'bout (Score:2, Interesting)

    by iminplaya ( 723125 )
    I wonder what great things they can calculate in just seconds now...

    How 'bout this? 1,000,000! It tatkes pretty long on my P3.

    • 1000000! in hex (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 3770 ( 560838 )
      I did that in hex on a 486DX266 back in the day. It took approximately a month.

      I did it in hex because it was easier to write an efficient algorithm.

      And then I decided to write a program which would convert that huge resulting hex number to decimal.

      Only, that is when I realized that it would take more computational power to convert that number to decimal from hex, than to start from scratch and do it in decimal "natively".
    • You just need the right software. With PARI-GP [bordeaux.fr] my 2.6 GHz P4 takes a little more than 13 seconds.

  • Chaos Theory... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oneiron ( 716313 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:14AM (#10745033)
    They really need to get these things crackin on chaos theory... How many inhabited planets equals one amino acid chain? What are our odds of hitting the protein jackpot? You know?

    • Re:Chaos Theory... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nwbvt ( 768631 )
      "What are our odds of hitting the protein jackpot?"

      100%. Given that we exist on this planet (which is of course a necessary fact in order for there to be a 'we' in the equation), proteins must exist on our planet. The probability of any given planet having proteins evolve is irrelevant as we do not live on just 'any given planet', we must (as a condition of our existence) live on a planet on which life did evolve.

      • Do we exist on this planet or do we exist in this universe? I'm not sure if you grasped my point. I was hinting at a wild idea/hypothesis/theory that popped into my frontal lobe, recently:

        -Our universe as part of a pool of goop on a planet which exists on a size-scale millions of times greater than our own.

        -Humans as the worker-bees trying to create the puzzle pieces of the amino-acids/protiens that are developing in this pool of goop.

        -Or maybe a pool of goop inside of some alien uterus or maybe
        • Those are some powerful drugs you are taking there. Doesn't mean what you wrote is in any way meaningful.
          • Meaning is a relative term.

            I know my ideas are nothing more than a few of the billions of infinite possibilities of existence. Can you say the same of yours?

            Is it dangerous to aspire to such great heights? I think it could be, but I'm still learning (you've helped). There is a balance. I know this much. I intend to position myself just to the left of center because I've found the surface in the middle is a tad slippery.
      • we must (as a condition of our existence) live on a planet on which life did evolve.

        Or maybe life evolved somewhere else and arrived here sometime before now. You want to consider that? Or does that just complicate things to much for you, and you'd rather not make pesky distinctions like that between necessary and sufficient?
        • Highly unlikely and completely irrelevant even if it did happen. It doesn't really matter if the "protein jackpot" evolved here from lose amino acid bases or came here from an extraterrestrial source. Their abundancy is still a necessary condition of our existence.

          And it is certainly not a sufficient condition. Anyone with half a brain knows that just because amino acids were able to come into existence in no way means that intelligent life, much less us in particular, would also come into existence on

    • Re:Chaos Theory... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:55AM (#10745153) Homepage Journal
      They really need to get these things crackin on chaos theory... How many inhabited planets equals one amino acid chain? What are our odds of hitting the protein jackpot? You know?

      Ah, Chaos Theory possibly the most widely popularised, yet least widely understood areas of mathematics ever. Exactly how is Chaos Theory going to help in counting extrasolar planets, or calculating probabilities? You need to actually have some understanding of the system before you can hope to actually apply any dynamical system theory to it at all. Presently, I don't think we do understand exactly how random chemicals manage to form proteins, and self replicating chemicals. I don't see how a fast computer and a fueld of math largely irrelevant to the subject at hand is going to help.

      Jedidiah.
    • My wife hits the "proten jackpot" quite often. Oh wait, that protein jackpot. Nevermind.

  • Yeah. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But can it cook me dinner yet? Seriously how much f***ing computer power do we need to bake brownies? I can't wait to throw out my girlfriend 1.0 once they finally come up with one that doesn't put up a inpenetrable firewall in bed.

  • Appliccations (Score:5, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:20AM (#10745046) Homepage Journal
    They meant hydrodynamics, financial modeling, etc. But no mention at all of how to combat spurious lawsuits [groklaw.net].

    In an apparent first for /. [slashdot.org] today, mo mention of robots, either.

    This is OT, but I never noticed it before - the following HTML works here:

    link to slashdot:
    <a href="/.">/.</a>

    • Re:Appliccations (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:37AM (#10745101)

      That html works anywhere, its an absolute path on the current server (slashdot.org) the path is /. which expands to http://slashdot.org/. and the . is either removed by your browser or redirected by the webserver to http://slashdot.org/ or http://slashdot.org/./ (which is of course, the same as http://slashdot.org/)
      • I've tried it outside of slashdot and it doesn't work, not even in Firefox, which surprises me. IIRC, if it's a few words or at least not a valid URL, Firefox tends to look up the item in Google's "I'm feeling lucky" search and go there. It doesn't seem to work even with putting "/." in the address bar, it tries to do "I'm feeling lucky" but it doesn't work.

  • No key cracking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by acidblood ( 247709 ) <decio@@@decpp...net> on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:30AM (#10745079) Homepage
    I recall reading on the RealWorldTech [realworldtech.com] forums that these are highly specialized machines and particularly geared to floating point computation. As integer factorization, index calculus computation for discrete logarithm cracking, Pollard rho attacks for computing elliptic curve discrete logarithms, etc. are integer algorithms, crypto should be safe from this particular beast.

    And before anyone asks about symmetric/secret-key cryptosystems and hash functions, recall that these are also based on integer operations, so they're safe from the BlueGene as well.

    • Re:No key cracking (Score:2, Informative)

      by fatphil ( 181876 )
      Anything that does arithmetic with integer maths can be done in FP too. My PIES project, like GIMPS and all the others, does integer maths almost entirely in the FPU units.

      Logical operations, yup, they're out of scope, but addition and multiplication, which are the heart of all the arithmetic algorithms you mention, can all be hived off to the FPU.

      Phil
      • Hello Phil, how are you doing? Sorry I didn't answer your email back when I received it.

        However, I don't think we can easily do sieving, for instance, using the FPU. That would rule out the most powerful factoring algorithms like NFS and MPQS.

        Also, GIMPS is completely different from your ordinary key cracking workload. They're doing huge FFTs on really huge numbers. You can't really compare it to a factoring program working on hundred-digits integers.
    • I am guessing the chips do have integer units though. I suppose they could drop the intmultiply and intdivide units from the circuit masks but it doesn't make sense to do that. The strong point of this kind of supercomputer is the data interconnect, whether that data is int or FP is secondary, although it should definitely be fast at FP.

      Actually, I think it makes sense to keep a intmultiply unit in there for calculating table addresses, it is silly to drop that, hardware is likely to do this faster than
  • But can it play Doom3?

  • Penguin Power. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Big news for IBM! I wonder what great things they can calculate in just seconds now..."

    Their sales of Linux.
  • "I wonder what great things they can calculate in just seconds now... maybe I should get a stronger PGP key."

    It is quite clear what these computers are doing. They are designed to compute the folding patterns of protein molecules, a task which requires immense computational power.

    • If you'd spend a little time dredging around IBM's Blue Gene/L website you'd find that it is not specifically designed to any one thing and computing folding patterns of protein molecules is sort of their demo task (I suppose because it does take a lot of computational power and you wind up with pretty pictures)

      I read a power point sales presentation and the plan seemed to be secure the top spot on the super computer list and then sell little versions to all sorts of folks.

      Anyway I read several interesting

  • Well, I'm confused, how can they figure out the speed so easily, when it's so hard to test the difference in speed between x86 AMDs & Intels? The other computers aren't faster at some things? Is it some special bench?

  • "A Beowulf Cluster [beowulf.org] of these!!!"

    What? No one has posted that already?

  • that we know of...... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would rather get a list of top secret fatest computers in the world.
    • "I would rather get a list of top secret fatest computers in the world."

      I'm surprised somebody didn't make a stale joke about any machine running Windows being the 'fatest' computer. Come to think of it, where are the Beowulf, Longhorn, or Doom 3 jokes?
  • That really increases the SGI usefulness. Develop/Debug/setup on your laptop/desktop and ship to the Supercomputer for production.

    This is a pretty useful thing I think.

    • Re:Yes but does it run Linux like the SGI? (Score:4, Informative)

      by nchip ( 28683 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @06:29AM (#10745734) Homepage
      Yes and no [linuxdevices.com].

      The Linux-based host nodes manage user interaction functions, while the Linux-based service nodes provide control and monitoring capabilities.

      Linux is also used in I/O nodes, which provide a gigabit Ethernet connection to the outside world for each group of 64 compute nodes, or every 128 processors. Thus, the full BlueGene/L system will have 1024 I/O nodes, which essentially form a Linux cluster.

      The actual compute nodes -- the 128,000 processors -- do not run Linux, but instead run a very simple operating system written from scratch by the Project's scientists.
  • Bluegen hitting over 70TF is a tremendous effort. There is nothing that comes near. And this is only 16 racks ( 25% of the total system) of the 64 rack system.
    Hats off to IBM for doing an outstanding job. And to the others in the race better luck next year.

    Also this runs ppc chips what else do you want an Itanium/Opteron what you want radiation burns.....

    PS I posted this on thursday night but the moronic slashdot editor threw it out. This is old news... Anyway... C'est la vie.

  • Is it needed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ceriel Nosforit ( 682174 )
    The final machine will help scientists work out the safety, security and reliability requirements for the US's nuclear weapons stockpile, without the need for underground nuclear testing.

    Could someone explain to me why this task requires such a monster of a machine? And how can one address (as in write code for) the numerous unknowable factors that seems to be included in the problem that is to be solved? The definition just seems to be too abstract to be an actual solvable problem, and if it is solvable

  • Too late (Score:2, Funny)

    by vile7707 ( 470358 )
    *snip*
    " maybe I should get a stronger PGP key."

    We've already calculated your next 250 pgp keys, and divined your future. Hint: avoid badgers.

  • applications (Score:3, Informative)

    by photonic ( 584757 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @06:03AM (#10745683)
    Machine number one will go to Livermore, probably for doing some nuclear stuf. Number two will go to the Netherlands for the Lofar [lofar.org] project. This is a 300 kilometer diameter radio telescope that observes at low frequencies (up to 250 MHz). It constists of thousands of small antennas [lofar.org] spread across half the country. Their signals will be interferometrically combined to form the images (compare e.g. to the VLA [nrao.edu]). Blue Gene will be used to combine all the signals in real time, I believe the total bandwidth from the antennas is some terabyte/sec.

  • Climate modeling (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @06:44AM (#10745754) Homepage Journal
    Ok, so of the three fastest computers in the world, one [bbc.co.uk] is almost exclusively dedicated to environmental climate models, and the other [com.com] two [ibm.com] have it as part of their tasks.

    Perhaps this could bury the arguments on Slashdot that there is no hard data or serious research about global warming.

    • Re:Climate modeling (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
      Playing devil's advocate:

      Just because people are running a bunch of simulations on climate change doesn't mean the results are useful. If people were running a bunch of simulations on the existence of dragons and fairies, I would hardly expect reasoning people to use that as evidence that they're real.

    • Re:Climate modeling (Score:2, Informative)

      by hawkeye ( 4170 )
      While I'm certainly an advocate of playing it safe with the environment, I do, however, understand the point(s) of those that don't subscribe to the global warming theory.

      In truth, we don't have enough data, from our past, to understand whether our climatic changes are just brief glitches or undeniable trends.

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