Los Alamos finishes installing Crossroads super to test nukes without a big bang

After months of work unpacking, installing, and deploying the various subsystems and supporting infrastructure, Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) latest super, the Crossroads system, has been installed. This big beast is tasked with one of the US Department of Energy's (DoE) most secretive workloads: making sure America' …

[Hull]

Indeed

"smash-hit movie"

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: Indeed

"Would you like to play a game?"

[cosmodrome]

So, we can now turn our planet into a radioactive, icy and unhinhabitable hellhole in an environment friendly way. That's progress!

[SnailFerrous]

The USA is developing new nuclear weapons? Shouldn't there be sanctions to stop them getting the advanced technology to build this sort of supercomputer? UN inspections of their WMD sites? An invasion to disarm the regime?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

You believe the USA have WMDs? Based purely on some dodgy video you found on the internet which was obviously faked on a soundstage.

Those guys were obviously actors

[StrangerHereMyself]

Credibility

I've predicted the Test Ban Treaty will eventually be scuttled since at some point in time there will be the necessity to develop a new warhead and you simply cannot be sure that it works as intended without actually setting one off. There will be enormous political pressure to test since the credibility of our deterrent is at stake.

Simulations are nice but they cannot replace a real-life test.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Credibility

There is a portly gentleman in North Korea who will probably accept a sub-contract for the testing

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Credibility

Most people don't seem to realize that aforementioned gentleman got the designs for these thermonuclear warheads from his Northern neighbor and didn't actually invent or develop anything himself.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Credibility

Of course the northern neighbour, or rather the prior entity the Soviet Union received information on the bomb via Klaus Fuchs

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Credibility

Not the thermonuclear designs. Those came years later.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Credibility

Fair point

[Pascal Monett]

And that matters why ?

He's a nutjob building nukes, and the day he's got them, he won't be afraid of using them.

I just hope that NK is blanketed in spy sats watching his every move. The day he starts setting up a base to launch nuclear missiles, it should be destroyed without hesitation and without delay.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Tad bit late for that I think. NK has already demonstrated both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that work, at least some of the time.

I don't think even they are mad enough to attempt a live demonstration of the complete system, so I'll leave the speculation as to whether they could actually achieve that to the expert analysts...

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Credibility

There is however a small risk. That he'll put the rest device on an ICBM and send it over to the US

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Credibility

He won't. He knows what will happen if he does.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: the Test Ban Treaty will eventually be scuttled

Which is a shame, it's the thing England, India, Pakistan, Australia and the W Indies agree on.

If only we could have taught the Americans, we would have world peace

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: Credibility

The "Test Ban Treaty" prohibits nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space, or in the ocean. You can still test underground.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Credibility

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also bans underground testing. Too bad the United States didn't ratify it and neither did China.

The CTBT is therefore only a pause in nuclear testing, not the definitive end. Note that Russia signed and ratified the treaty, but I doubt they'll keep abiding by it if anyone, especially the U.S., starts testing again.

[Fido]

For me the main take away message is how important the high-bandwidth memory Xeon Max will be in high-performance computing. This is explained in the quote by Grider that "it hardly ever happens in computing that you can move to a new system and see huge gains without changing the codes, but the switch from Trinity to Crossroads will do just that." Said another way, crossroads combines the magic of Riken's Fugaku supercomputer with the more familiar x86 architecture and execution environment.