back to article No need to worry: US blows $174m on new Cray to simulate nukes

Cray is going to help the US watch over its arsenal of nukes, having won a US$174 million contract to supply a new supercomputer to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The Cray XC super to be provided under the contract will be hooked up to the company's Sonexion storage. Dubbed “Trinity”, the system is …

  1. Lars Silver badge
    Happy

    Shurly

    This must be a Windows machine, if not, shurly MS has the money to deliver or what.

  2. Mark 85

    Nice plan, but at some point to be really sure, you have to test one otherwise the thing is only guessing based on theoretical inputs and the programming of the computer. I wonder if the program will outsourced?

    1. RedneckMother

      @Mark 85

      No doubt. Either to India or China.

      <grin>

    2. Psyx

      "Nice plan, but at some point to be really sure, you have to test one otherwise the thing is only guessing based on theoretical inputs and the programming of the computer."

      It's been good enough for the last twenty or so years. We stopped glassing far corners of the Pacific and bits of desert less than a day's drive from LA in favour of computer simulations quite some time ago, in case you hadn't noticed.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        re: It's been good enough for the last twenty or so years

        Err ... how do we know?

        The computer model of the bomb matches the other computer models of the bomb ?

        1. Psyx

          Re: re: It's been good enough for the last twenty or so years

          "Err ... how do we know?

          The computer model of the bomb matches the other computer models of the bomb ?"

          Because early simulations were compared against blasts.

          We don't detonate nukes for fun any more because there is no reason to do so. Just setting a few off a week to check that the simulations are still accurate is fine in the case of firecrackers, but not something that should be encouraged with thermonuclear weapons.

  3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Simulating Destruction with Testing or AI Stimulating Conversion ....

    .... to NEUKlearer Armed and Armoured Force Majeure?

    The machine's main job will be to conduct simulations of the US nuke stockpile, helping it to understand how its weapons are holding up as they age, while avoiding the need for underground detonations of devices. Cray says the machine will test “the stockpile’s safety, security, reliability and performance.”

    True LOVE and Life in ITs Command and Control of Global Operating Devices* becomes fundamentally exciting and radically engaging whenever one is able and enabled to manage distribution and protection, and degradation and destruction, and miniaturisation and virtualisation of aged nuke weapon stockpiles …… and just for now will there be no introduction into the equation and mention of Postmodern NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive Weapons and Virtual Arms of Fab and Fabless Power and Destruction …. which are realised to be failing concentrations of groups and/or rogue renegade individuals of a psychotic and psychopathic persuasion and misunderstanding and misunderestimation.

    Old aged nukes are extremely unstable and a danger to stockpile because of catastrophic command software degradation with the smarter targeting of key code holder chain personnel.

    And …….. So a machine, says Cray, will test humans ….. for what/who else is out, other than other machines and aliens, to protect y’all from weapons stockpiled and in stock for dumb sale and a’stealing.

    *Truly are Live Operational Virtual Environments an extremely odd and peculiarly particular place in time and space and Base CyberSpace Command and Central Control Units ….. AIDivisions.

    The only pertinent and impertinent question here and now today for tomorrow and subsequent days and zerodays is ........ Is it to be widely perceived and accepted in IT fields, and eventually believed and delivered to the masses, as being initially an Alien and Wild Wacky Western Delight or an Exotic Erotic Eastern Confection, for IT can spin any one and/or all of those tales into any number of fine phormed and accommodating threads with spiders that weave immaculate information and intelligence webs ...... for SMARTR InterNetworking of Bigger Pictures and Greater Games Plays.

    I Kid U Not ...... SIN, but not as you imagine IT to be in the enthrall and at the beck and call of vices/sweet sticky temptations.

  4. J__M__M

    really?

    Trinity? Were the other options Little Boy and Fat Man?

    Let's move on.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Newspeak, we can haz it!

    "watch over its arsenal of nukes"

    In the same way as a car manufacturer "watches over its supply of cars". Only in this case, the cars are meant to do extreme drive-by shootings.

    The current "nuclear posture" is all about keeping billions of the freshly printed money go to the nice people in the military-industrial complex:

    The 2013 “Nuclear Employment Strategy” continued U.S. government reliance on a “nuclear triad” of ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, and bomber-launched nuclear weapons. Although the need for one or more legs of this “triad” has been debated since the early 1990s, the 2013 report concluded that “retaining all three triad legs will best maintain strategic stability....

    Another indication that the Obama administration is in no hurry to fulfill its promises about building a nuclear weapons-free world is found in its fiscal 2014 budget proposal to Congress. Here, amid sharp cuts for a broad variety of programs, there is a proposed 9 percent increase in federal funding for the Energy Department’s U.S. nuclear weapons activities, including upgrading nuclear warheads (like the B61 gravity bomb, slated for a $10 billion makeover) and modernizing nuclear weapons production facilities.

    In particular the B61 is is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate-pushed retardation. Well, maybe Obama has information about Chtulhu's upcoming awakening, who knows:

    Obama’s B61 Life Extension Program proposes to spend over $11 billion over several years to keep the variable-yield bombs “operational” through 2025 (nuclear weapons have limited shelf lives). This includes a billion dollars to add new tail fins in order to raise the intelligence of the things, to convert them from ‘dumb bombs’ subject solely to gravity to ‘smart bombs’ that can be steered to their targets. The new tail fins also permit B61s to be carried by the F-35 stealth fighter, perhaps the single greatest Pentagon boondoggle of all time. Not only does the proposed modernization violate the promise of the 2010 NPR to avoid new capabilities, it lowers the ‘nuclear threshold’ by making the bombs more ‘usable.’ This is because the F-35 can (hypothetically) get closer to its target prior to detection and attempted interdiction, reducing the required yield of the more precise bomb, reducing the radioactive fallout of the explosion, and reducing the consequences of its use.

    Why in the world do the US and NATO need a refurbished nuclear bomb first imagined by weapons designers at Los Alamos shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis? They don’t, even by both parties own reckoning. There is no conceivable military use for the things today. NATO wrestled with its mission, its very reason for being, following the collapse of the Soviet threat in the early nineties. Rather than fold the tent, throw a party, and call it an era—as the peace movements of its member-states suggested—NATO expanded eastward, making new members of its former foes. The US ignored (often gleefully) the howling protests of successive Russian leaders who claimed NATO expansion violated an agreement between Boris Yeltsin and George H.W. Bush to keep the alliance where it was.

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      Re: Newspeak, we can haz it! Although hazing doesn’t hack IT.

      The current "nuclear posture" is all about keeping billions of the freshly printed money go to the nice people in the military-industrial complex: ….. Destroy All Monsters

      Quite so, Destroy All Monsters, but that no longer servers any great and good purpose for the current “nuclear posture” is being inexorably overtaken and replaced by an advanced cyber posturing with especial attention and quite magical provision of underspending and/or accommodating QE allocations to special forces which be agents of stealthy intelligence services in the, well, Smarter Applied Programming Sector‽ …… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10965182/David-Cameron-pledges-1.1-billion-for-defence-to-fight-cyber-terrorists.html

      Strange how there’s always shed loads of money always found immediately available for projects and problems which appear to have been conjured out of nowhere and able to target for mass destruction and threaten wholesale disruption of virtually anything, practically anywhere, nowadays ……. which, in the hands and hearts of minds of a certain kind of boffin, they certainly can. Tread carefully and quietly and quite warily in their presents and presence

      The enigmatic secret which then remains to destroy all established and establishment forces and sources, if not known and ACTed APTly and most positively upon, is to spend it wisely so that it is isn’t later uncovered and to be discovered to have be lost and wasted and decidedly and designedly improperly channeled into regular and traditional outlets and outfits which be totally unfit for future Greater IntelAIgent Games purpose ……. and Supremely Sublime Cyber Play.

    2. Charles Manning

      Re: Newspeak, we can haz it!

      " This includes a billion dollars to add new tail fins in order to raise the intelligence of the things"

      You have to hand it to Obama and his stratagists, this is brilliant. He keeps the gravy tap open for the military indsutry and still doesn't offend his Huffington post supporters: "Our prez doesn't make bombs, he's just putting tail fins on the old ones so they cause less collateral damage."

      "Smart bombing" high yield devices like nukes is pretty pointless. A hit or a 100m miss and you're still going to have a bad day.

      Of course there are also the "bunker busting" nukes that would need steering, but as DAM points out, these would move nukes from being defensive weapons of last resort to the everyday use racks.

    3. oldcoder

      Re: Newspeak, we can haz it!

      There are still idiots in North Korea and Iran.

      Still nice to be able to tell them you can bomb them to death, and can't prevent you.

  6. Nigel The Pigeon

    The machine's main job

    "will be to conduct simulations of the US nuke stockpile, helping it to understand how its weapons are holding up as they age"

    ...helping it to understand when its weapons should be sold before they age.

    1. John G Imrie

      Re: The machine's main job

      "will be to conduct simulations of the US nuke stockpile, helping it to understand how its weapons are holding up as they age"

      ...helping it to understand when its weapons should be sold before they age.

      helping it to understand when its weapons should be launched against its fleshy overloads without damaging it's fellow computers.

  7. Dani Eder

    Useless for Bitcoin Mining

    This new supercomputer will have 1/800,000 the speed of the bitcoin mining community, and is therefore useless for verifying the financial transactions on that network. The reasons it is so outclassed are (1) bitcoin mining has a financial reward, and people will do anything for money, and (2) they use custom chips optimized for the task. The Cray supercomputer is more general purpose, able to do any kind of scientific calculation.

    The point of my comment is not bragging rights, but to point out how much you can gain from custom chips. It might be worth designing custom chips just for nuclear simulations, and dramatically lower the cost of the computer. The first custom bitcoin chips were designed by one person and manufactured for far less than $174 million.

  8. Disco Trev

    But will it play Tic Tac Toe

    This is obviously the most important question for any super computer running any kind of simulation involving Nuclear Weapons!!

    1. Spotfist

      Re: But will it play Tic Tac Toe

      "Do you want to play a game?"

      Hmmmm "Global Thermonuclear War" sounds like a bit of fun, what could go wrong?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    And in the event...

    ...of total destruction of the USofA due to the inability of the nukes to destroy the enemy in time, then Cray offer a full money back guarantee* on this purchase

    *Return postage at buyers expense.

  10. Caesarius
    Big Brother

    Obligatory quotes

    Is the CRAY able to test the nukes? Because it's connected?

    HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

    Or, better, The Forbin Project (excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project):

    It also states that it had detected the attempt to disarm the missiles and detonates two of them in their silos "so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference". Guardian/Colossus tells Dr. Forbin that "freedom is just an illusion" and that "In time, you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin replies, "Never!"

  11. Caesarius
    Headmaster

    Tripple?

    So "times 8" is the same as trippled? Because 8=2^3?

  12. roger stillick
    Go

    CRAY This ??

    This apparently is for real until 2017...and then the last remaining START-2 weapon goes into to the fuel exhaustion cycle...( tritium decay )...

    Q= start of the end of NUKES ??

    Ref= nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/weapons/w76.html

    IMHO= apparently this is where the CRAY gets involved...same for the rest of the lot...

    caveiat= the entire nuclearweapopnarchive.org might be SCI-FI, but it sure is a good read...RS.

  13. Herby

    If they bought Raspberry Pi's with the $$$

    And connected them all together, what computing power would that be?

    Begging the question: Can a simulation be done with a bunch of RPi's. I suspect we will never know.

    Interesting thought experiment though!

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