Australian supercomputer 'Taingiwilta' comes online this year with [REDACTED] inside Australia's Defence Science Technology Group will bring a supercomputer online in the second half of 2024, but when The Register asked for information on its specs the only response we received was "Next question." We were warned that such a response was in the offing by Kristina Johnson, director of supercomputing strategic …
"There is hole in my bucket, dear Lisa..."
I get the impression this speaker at the conference hadn't exactly sung for her supper as I assume she was a drawcard if not a keynote and consequently with possibly some less than impressed attendees.
The adage: "if you have nothing to say, say nothing" could equally be applied where there is nothing you can say.
Perhaps for the next conference the director of the Ruritanian War Department's High Performance Quantum Computing (HPQC) facility should be invited to share his/her insights into their neurobiotechnology based HPQC system Bourbaki developed by Vincent Teutonstein.
"Bourbaki is self securing as it can with quantum magic alter reality, or the perception if reality, but we are not sure which or possibly both and as it keeps growing new capabilities who can tell? How well does Bourbaki work in practice? Well. Have you tried booking flight to Streslau, Ruritania?"
Perhaps Bourbaki's director has but the record has been "derealized." :)
Johnson may have been a bit overly tight-lipped (out of cautiousness I guess), but looking around (using links in Simon's article) one can find additional info. For example, the initial announcement (2022) for Taingiwilta, stated it "will be one of the 50 most powerful computers in the world", putting it on Page 1 of Top500, at 12 PF/s peak or higher (eg. Dogwood/Cactus in 2022; today it would be 20 PF/s). Also, seeing how Australia has twice the population of Ohio, one may imagine that Taingiwilta could be twice as fast as the Buckeyes' Cardinal for some reason, so maybe 21 PF/s (peak), or better (hopefully).
For software, the CREATE link suggests to me: "CREATE-SH: Military ship design" ... (as suggested also in Spoobistle's comment down below).
I'm sure the power requirements are out there somewhere. I'd expect the air conditioners to be visible in google earth too. Then there's the size of the building and I'm sure a lot more parameters I've not thought of. You can bet the boffins in all potential enemy states have already analyzed all of the available information though.
@Spoobistle
Not sure if Australia needs better beer bottles, certainly needs better beer ... (runs away, hoping not to meet one of the (seems like high hundreds of thousands) of Aussies that seem to be couch surfing their way across the UK at any time. Though TBF, lots of Aussies I have met are unimpressed by the local big name Oz brews)
This is Australia - just about EVERY building has buckets of aircon around or on it. There are lots of Defence Buildings in very out of the way places [out of the way in Australia means hundreds of kms from the nearest town never mind city] covered in air con and power generation where you could hide it.
《difference between interpreted and compiled languages,》... is?
A language is defined by its grammar/syntax and semantics. Its purely a matter of implementation whether the its interpreted or compliled and even then the boundary is blurred by just-in-time compilation, microcode and even threaded interpreters.
I assume the muddled question might have been to elicit the differences between compilation and interpretation: contrast and compare. Even Smalltalk was "compiled" into byte code which was interpreted and indeed there was hardware Smalltalk on a Risc (SOAR) which was roughly a Smalltalk processor.
Even 40 years ago I concluded that it took a very special kind of retard to work in defence science and would have avoided the sector like the plague. It appears most of the Australian talent have reached the same conclusion and the sector is decidedly very second eleven (B-team.) The requirements of AU citizenship and an intrusive security clearance process pretty much preclude poaching talent from overseas.
Probably fortunate that this bit of hardware is somewhat hush hush as it will save the embarrassment of trying to pronounce the name correctly. I am only guessing that its tai-ngi-wil-ta and ng is ñ otherwise its tangy wilter.
and an intrusive security clearance process:
For security clearance, Americans have to report "overseas travel on a foreign passport" -- the Americans already know where you've traveled on an American passport.
Australians have to report "overseas travel". And not just the destination, you have to have the dates. As you can imagine that can get difficult by mid career even for native Australians, ("I was working in London, and I visited France ... and Belgium ... on ???") even for the ones who don't have migrant parents. Not to mention that 1/3 of Australians were born overseas.
《which makes it hard to get staff for defence HPC》
These kind of facilities, I believe, normally lack windows of any sort which I suspect would rather cramp the style of a chronic defenestrator. :)
Given the BOFH penchant for terminating discussions with his adversaries ex fenestra one has to wonder whether he was trained by the south african security services, kgb or was an associate of Cheney and Rumsfeld.
I assume the speaker's presence at this conference was to pitch the advantages of working for defence HPC. Come join us fame and fortune await... actually no fame, ... not so much fortune either, ... you get to get to work with one of the world's top 50 HPC systems but I cannot tell you what it is☆, ... will be doing CFD but cannot say for what [splitting the beer atom? Or where the AUKUS submarines detectable* in AU's shallower waters?]
The Devil has a better(sic) prospectus. ;)
☆ Half a billion surplus transputers and the joys of Occam.
* If the astronomers ever devise a sensitive, directional neutrino detector then I imagine one of the pillars of deterence evaporates. If a neutrino astronomy suddenly goes quiet you might well be suspicious. ;)
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