Supercomputers crack sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared

physorg.com ^ | April 29, 2011 | Linda Vu

[allmost]

Australian researchers have done the impossible -- they’ve found the sixty-trillionth binary digit of Pi-squared! The calculation would have taken a single computer processor unit (CPU) 1,500 years to calculate, but scientists from IBM and the University of Newcastle managed to complete this work in just a few months on IBM's "BlueGene/P" supercomputer, which is designed to run continuously at one quadrillion calculations per second.

Their work was based on a mathematical formula discovered a decade ago in part by the Department of Energy's David H. Bailey, the Chief Technologist of the Computational Research Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Australian team took Bailey’s program, which ran on a single PC processor, and made it run faster and in parallel on thousands of independent processors.

"What is interesting in these computations is that until just a few years ago, it was widely believed that such mathematical objects were forever beyond the reach of human reasoning or machine computation," Bailey said.

"Once again we see the utter futility in placing limits on human ingenuity and technology."

[allmost]

People get started on some things and just wont stop.

[Avery Iota Kracker]

I’m not going to read the whole article. Can someone give me the spoiler? Is the end of the binary file a zero or a one?
Inquiring minds want...whatever.

[Bullish]

IBM's "BlueGene/P" supercomputer, which is designed to run continuously at one quadrillion calculations per second.

I'm thinkin' that processor runs a little hot.

[allmost]

It’s an easy read. The purpose remains skeptical.

[wastedyears]

I bet that could cook breakfast.

Processor probably gets pretty hot.

[AlexW]

I think I will go have a few drinks squared to celebrate.

[LukeL]

The tile is all wrong, Pi are round, cake are squared.

[Nickname]

Must be a Wendy’s Pi.

[nathanbedford]

I suppose this is related to the story:

As I was reading the article here: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-supercomputers-sixty-trillionth-binary-digit-pi-squared.html in the middle of the article I got the following ad in German:

"Ads by Google

Computer in Rosenheim - PCs, Notebooks, Drucker und Zubehör in Rosenheims großem Computerladen - www.pcwerx.de"

It tells me that I can buy computers etc. from the biggest store in the local town here in Germany, Rosenheim.

I suppose as a barely computer literate operator I have been unwittingly accepting cookies from many dubious sources but it is a bit offputting to realize that Google apparently knows all about me. It certainly knows that I live in Germany and, generally, where.

Can somebody with at least the bare minimum of knowledge tell me what's going on?

[Cementjungle]

They should have printed all the digits so we could verify it.

[Arthur McGowan]

Why don’t they just drop it? It isn’t going to get Obama removed from office.

[the_Watchman]

IBM uses slower processors in their cluster machines. This keeps the heat generation down and allows them to pack more CPU modules into a smaller volume. So the individual processors are actually cooler than the Nehalem Xeon processors which we, Bull, use in our cluster machines.

Bull machines are water cooled and use fans which SCREAM when the heat builds up. I visited an installation that our crew had installed at a French nuclear computation facility last October. At the time the Bull Tera 100 cluster was the fastest in Europe and the 6th fastest in the world. Before we could enter the computer room we had to put on industrial grade ear muffs to protect our ears.

[ComputerGuy]

Your IP address can be used to locate you, sometimes to within a few tens of miles. It looks like you're receiving targeted advertising, that's all.
When you make a request for a web page, your IP address goes with it. I wouldn't be worried about it - it's usually just a nuisance thing.
My new smart phone is basically an advertising platform, btw. I get targeted advertising all day, every day.
Cookies are separate issue. Most cookies are of the harmless 'session' variety. Others are called tracking cookies because they log and report which web sites you visit. Since I surf the web in full-blown paranoia mode, I monitor my cookies. Anything that I don't recognize as a session cookie gets whacked.

[D-fendr]

Google Ads can be bought to appear only to people in certain geographic locations.

Content providers display ads Google provides.

Your browsers transmits your IP address.

Your IP address corresponds to your geographic location.

[TigersEye]

The answer is 42.

[the_Watchman]

Yes, but is that octal or hex?

[nathanbedford]

Thanks to both of you.

[TigersEye]

I think it’s bleeding quadrophenic.

[RightOnline]

Not exactly accurate. I “owned” IBM’s worldwide HPC marketing for five years (still in the biz; different co. now). Blue Gene, Linux clusters, etc. can all ‘scream’ in a big way; depends heavily on # of procs./cores, individual proc. speed (and you’ll see IBM, HP, et al use the latest/greatest from Intel & AMD pretty much across the board), proper interconnect (BG uses a proprietary fabric; IB is the fabric of choice for clusters), other factors. Cooling is essential for any supercomputer, several ways to effect that (including, as you suggest, water cooled doors....but those tend to be the exception vs. the rule).

[RightOnline]

Not “processor”, singular....a Blue Gene would have thousands of processors.