LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
Indian advancements in Supercomputing
- Thread starter LETHALFORCE
- Start date
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
Made in America? How U.S. Exports Helped Fuel the South Asian Arms Race
How U.S. Exports Helped Fuel the South Asian Arms Race
By Gary Milhollin
The Washington Post
June 7, 1998, p. C1
India and Pakistan, fresh from testing nuclear devices, are poised to build missiles that could deliver the bomb deep into each other's territory. The United States deplores these developments, but along with other countries, stands guilty of supplying much of the necessary technology.
In fact, India's next generation of nuclear missiles will probably be designed with the help of American-made equipment.
U.S. officials say that in 1996, Digital Equipment Corp. shipped a supercomputer to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, a key missile research site. Supercomputers are the most powerful tools known for designing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. They can model the thrust of a rocket, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the Earth's atmosphere and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact. Because of the billions of computations needed to solve these problems, a supercomputer's speed is invaluable for efficiently finding design solutions.
The DEC computer will come in handy at the Indian Institute of Science. The institute is on the British government's official list of organizations that procure goods and technology for India's missile programs. It develops India's most advanced rocket propellants, guidance systems and nose cones. Its wind tunnels and other equipment analyze rocket fuel combustion and flight performance. It has even been linked in published reports to India's new nuclear-capable missile called the "Sagarika," intended to be launched from submarines.
International Business Machines Corp. supplied the institute with an even more powerful supercomputer. According to IBM spokesman Fred McNeese, IBM installed the supercomputer at the institute's Supercomputing Education and Research Center, which specializes in computer-aided design. The machine operated at 1.4 billion operations per second when installed in 1994, and IBM upgraded it in March 1997 to perform 3.2 billion operations per second and again in June 1997 to 5.8 billion, making it one of the most powerful computers in India.
The pro-export Commerce Department granted a license for the DEC sale, despite the notoriety of the institute as a missile site. Commerce also licensed the original installation by IBM, but IBM performed the upgrades without a license, in apparent violation of the law.
This week, the U.S. Customs Service opened an investigation into the IBM upgrades. It is already investigating IBM for selling a supercomputer to Russia's leading nuclear weapons lab under similar circumstances.
The U.S. government requires an American company to obtain an export license if it wants to sell to a bomb-prone nation like India a computer that performs more than 2 billion operations per second. IBM claimed an exception, that allows such computers to be shipped as long as the buyer is not connected to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, missile or military work. The seller must ensure that the exception applies, which IBM failed to do. McNeese of IBM says only that the company "has no indication that the machine has been used for anything other than university research."
And there is the case of Viewlogic Systems Inc. of Marlborough, Mass. According to the Journal of Commerce, Viewlogic shipped computer software for designing printed circuit boards to an Indian missile manufacturer on the very day that President Clinton announced sanctions against India for its five nuclear weapon tests.
The Commerce Department approved the sale, despite the fact that the buyer was Bharat Dynamics Ltd. (BDL), a leading entry on the British government's list of Indian missile makers. BDL manufactures and assembles India's single-stage Prithvi missile, which can deliver a nuclear payload about 150 miles, and the two-stage Agni, which can deliver one about 1,500 miles. Both threaten Pakistan's major cities.
With better electronic circuits, BDL's nuclear missiles will be more accurate and reliable. The same is true of the antitank and other guided missiles that BDL makes, and advertises in a public catalogue.
How the Commerce Department could approve a sale to India's main missile assembly site remains a mystery. Both Viewlogic and the Commerce Department decline to comment on the sale. This misguided policy of helping India develop missiles is not new. In 1963, the United States began India's missile program by launching a U.S. rocket from India's new Thumba Range, which the United States helped design. Despite his recent claim to being "indigenous," A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the "father" of the Indian bomb, spent four months in training in the United States. After visiting NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast, where he saw the U.S. Scout space rocket in action, he returned to India to build a copy.
The U.S. government obligingly supplied data on the Scout's design after a request from the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. The Scout's first-stage rocket is identical to the first stage of India's longest-range missile, the Agni.
Virtually every element of India's nuclear and missile programs has been imported directly or copied from imported designs. The Agni's second-stage rocket motor is derived from a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile and the Agni's guidance system was developed with help from Germany's space agency. The story in Pakistan is similar. In 1962, NASA launched Pakistan's first rocket, a U.S.-made Nike-Cajun, in a project led by Tariq Mustafa, the senior scientific officer of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. NASA also trained Pakistani rocket scientists at Wallops Island. The Pakistanis were there at the same time as the Indians. Other NASA-sponsored launches followed until 1970. China stepped in later to supply Pakistan's need for bigger missiles, but Uncle Sam launched Pakistan's missile program just as he did India's.
Sanctions will stop at least some of the exports from the United States. Because of the recent nuclear tests, U.S. law now bars the sale to India or Pakistan of any "goods and technology" controlled by the Commerce Department. Although the White House was quick to apply financial sanctions, it is still deciding how to interpret this export prohibition. It could cost big exporting companies real money. The companies are already lining up to limit the sanctions as much as they can.
On May 14, the Industry Coalition on Technology Transfer, the exporters' main lobbying group, wrote to the White House urging that the sanctions be confined to nuclear-related items. They hope the White House will decide that missile-related and chemical weapon-related items will still be free for export. They also requested that they be allowed to sell spare parts and service for U.S. products already in place -- such as the DEC and IBM computers. The exporters seem content to watch India and Pakistan build nuclear missiles with American technology.
The administration is now considering three options. The first is to forbid any item controlled for export to be sold to anyone in India or Pakistan -- no one could buy a military-related item or any item that could help make nuclear weapons, chemical/biological weapons or missiles. Only 1 percent of U.S. sales to India are now controlled for export, so this option would be effective and painless.
The second option is to deny the nuclear and missile items to everybody, but allow private companies in India and Pakistan to buy only conventional military and chemical/biological items. The third option would allow the two governments to buy such items as well. These latter two options would undermine the integrity of the legislation passed by Congress.
What will the president decide? The pro-trade and pro-India forces are leaning on him, and he is bending. He has already hinted that he would be satisfied if India merely promised to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to cap its production of nuclear weapon material.
But neither pledge would mean much. The treaty tries to limit the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons by countries that already have arsenals. It has little to do with proliferation -- the decision of a country to build an arsenal in the first place. Even if India and Pakistan signed the treaty tomorrow, they would still be free to build an unlimited number of bombs and the missiles to deliver them. Both countries now have nuclear test data and India even has American supercomputers to process it. Capping nuclear material production won't work either. By the time a limit could be negotiated, India could have enough for well over 100 warheads. Pakistan could have enough for at least a couple dozen. The total yield could still devastate the subcontinent.
The only solution is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obliges countries other than the five big nuclear powers to give up the bomb. Although neither India nor Pakistan would join the treaty now, while tempers and rhetoric are boiling, there is a decent chance in the long run. The goal must be to get South Asia to behave like South Africa. Pretoria secretly built six workable warheads, but decided life would be better without them. Trade, investment and high-tech imports were judged more valuable than a nuclear arsenal. Argentina and Brazil made the same decision, as did Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which inherited nuclear warheads from their Soviet days.
All of these countries gave up the bomb and all except Brazil joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states in the 1990s.
That's the direction the world is going and the direction the world must press India and Pakistan to take. Pakistan has said repeatedly that it will join if India does, so the situation can still be reversed, even after Pakistan's tests.
Sanctions are the best hope of getting there. President Clinton should adopt a broad ban on high technology and convince U.S. allies to join. At a minimum, it would sever the technological lifeline that has always sustained the South Asian nuclear and missile effort. That alone would be a worthy achievement. It would prevent the Commerce Department from licensing more mass destruction.
And because a cutoff would ban much civilian high technology as well, India in particular would be deprived of what it needs to modernize its industry and armed forces. After a few years, India would face the technology gap that doomed the Warsaw Pact.
India's tests were a reckless maneuver by a shaky government to shore up domestic political support. The tests left Pakistan little choice but to answer in kind. When the aftershocks die down, and more rational heads prevail, the path away from the bomb will open once again.
How U.S. Exports Helped Fuel the South Asian Arms Race
By Gary Milhollin
The Washington Post
June 7, 1998, p. C1
India and Pakistan, fresh from testing nuclear devices, are poised to build missiles that could deliver the bomb deep into each other's territory. The United States deplores these developments, but along with other countries, stands guilty of supplying much of the necessary technology.
In fact, India's next generation of nuclear missiles will probably be designed with the help of American-made equipment.
U.S. officials say that in 1996, Digital Equipment Corp. shipped a supercomputer to the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, a key missile research site. Supercomputers are the most powerful tools known for designing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. They can model the thrust of a rocket, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the Earth's atmosphere and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact. Because of the billions of computations needed to solve these problems, a supercomputer's speed is invaluable for efficiently finding design solutions.
The DEC computer will come in handy at the Indian Institute of Science. The institute is on the British government's official list of organizations that procure goods and technology for India's missile programs. It develops India's most advanced rocket propellants, guidance systems and nose cones. Its wind tunnels and other equipment analyze rocket fuel combustion and flight performance. It has even been linked in published reports to India's new nuclear-capable missile called the "Sagarika," intended to be launched from submarines.
International Business Machines Corp. supplied the institute with an even more powerful supercomputer. According to IBM spokesman Fred McNeese, IBM installed the supercomputer at the institute's Supercomputing Education and Research Center, which specializes in computer-aided design. The machine operated at 1.4 billion operations per second when installed in 1994, and IBM upgraded it in March 1997 to perform 3.2 billion operations per second and again in June 1997 to 5.8 billion, making it one of the most powerful computers in India.
The pro-export Commerce Department granted a license for the DEC sale, despite the notoriety of the institute as a missile site. Commerce also licensed the original installation by IBM, but IBM performed the upgrades without a license, in apparent violation of the law.
This week, the U.S. Customs Service opened an investigation into the IBM upgrades. It is already investigating IBM for selling a supercomputer to Russia's leading nuclear weapons lab under similar circumstances.
The U.S. government requires an American company to obtain an export license if it wants to sell to a bomb-prone nation like India a computer that performs more than 2 billion operations per second. IBM claimed an exception, that allows such computers to be shipped as long as the buyer is not connected to nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, missile or military work. The seller must ensure that the exception applies, which IBM failed to do. McNeese of IBM says only that the company "has no indication that the machine has been used for anything other than university research."
And there is the case of Viewlogic Systems Inc. of Marlborough, Mass. According to the Journal of Commerce, Viewlogic shipped computer software for designing printed circuit boards to an Indian missile manufacturer on the very day that President Clinton announced sanctions against India for its five nuclear weapon tests.
The Commerce Department approved the sale, despite the fact that the buyer was Bharat Dynamics Ltd. (BDL), a leading entry on the British government's list of Indian missile makers. BDL manufactures and assembles India's single-stage Prithvi missile, which can deliver a nuclear payload about 150 miles, and the two-stage Agni, which can deliver one about 1,500 miles. Both threaten Pakistan's major cities.
With better electronic circuits, BDL's nuclear missiles will be more accurate and reliable. The same is true of the antitank and other guided missiles that BDL makes, and advertises in a public catalogue.
How the Commerce Department could approve a sale to India's main missile assembly site remains a mystery. Both Viewlogic and the Commerce Department decline to comment on the sale. This misguided policy of helping India develop missiles is not new. In 1963, the United States began India's missile program by launching a U.S. rocket from India's new Thumba Range, which the United States helped design. Despite his recent claim to being "indigenous," A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the "father" of the Indian bomb, spent four months in training in the United States. After visiting NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast, where he saw the U.S. Scout space rocket in action, he returned to India to build a copy.
The U.S. government obligingly supplied data on the Scout's design after a request from the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. The Scout's first-stage rocket is identical to the first stage of India's longest-range missile, the Agni.
Virtually every element of India's nuclear and missile programs has been imported directly or copied from imported designs. The Agni's second-stage rocket motor is derived from a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile and the Agni's guidance system was developed with help from Germany's space agency. The story in Pakistan is similar. In 1962, NASA launched Pakistan's first rocket, a U.S.-made Nike-Cajun, in a project led by Tariq Mustafa, the senior scientific officer of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. NASA also trained Pakistani rocket scientists at Wallops Island. The Pakistanis were there at the same time as the Indians. Other NASA-sponsored launches followed until 1970. China stepped in later to supply Pakistan's need for bigger missiles, but Uncle Sam launched Pakistan's missile program just as he did India's.
Sanctions will stop at least some of the exports from the United States. Because of the recent nuclear tests, U.S. law now bars the sale to India or Pakistan of any "goods and technology" controlled by the Commerce Department. Although the White House was quick to apply financial sanctions, it is still deciding how to interpret this export prohibition. It could cost big exporting companies real money. The companies are already lining up to limit the sanctions as much as they can.
On May 14, the Industry Coalition on Technology Transfer, the exporters' main lobbying group, wrote to the White House urging that the sanctions be confined to nuclear-related items. They hope the White House will decide that missile-related and chemical weapon-related items will still be free for export. They also requested that they be allowed to sell spare parts and service for U.S. products already in place -- such as the DEC and IBM computers. The exporters seem content to watch India and Pakistan build nuclear missiles with American technology.
The administration is now considering three options. The first is to forbid any item controlled for export to be sold to anyone in India or Pakistan -- no one could buy a military-related item or any item that could help make nuclear weapons, chemical/biological weapons or missiles. Only 1 percent of U.S. sales to India are now controlled for export, so this option would be effective and painless.
The second option is to deny the nuclear and missile items to everybody, but allow private companies in India and Pakistan to buy only conventional military and chemical/biological items. The third option would allow the two governments to buy such items as well. These latter two options would undermine the integrity of the legislation passed by Congress.
What will the president decide? The pro-trade and pro-India forces are leaning on him, and he is bending. He has already hinted that he would be satisfied if India merely promised to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to cap its production of nuclear weapon material.
But neither pledge would mean much. The treaty tries to limit the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons by countries that already have arsenals. It has little to do with proliferation -- the decision of a country to build an arsenal in the first place. Even if India and Pakistan signed the treaty tomorrow, they would still be free to build an unlimited number of bombs and the missiles to deliver them. Both countries now have nuclear test data and India even has American supercomputers to process it. Capping nuclear material production won't work either. By the time a limit could be negotiated, India could have enough for well over 100 warheads. Pakistan could have enough for at least a couple dozen. The total yield could still devastate the subcontinent.
The only solution is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obliges countries other than the five big nuclear powers to give up the bomb. Although neither India nor Pakistan would join the treaty now, while tempers and rhetoric are boiling, there is a decent chance in the long run. The goal must be to get South Asia to behave like South Africa. Pretoria secretly built six workable warheads, but decided life would be better without them. Trade, investment and high-tech imports were judged more valuable than a nuclear arsenal. Argentina and Brazil made the same decision, as did Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which inherited nuclear warheads from their Soviet days.
All of these countries gave up the bomb and all except Brazil joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states in the 1990s.
That's the direction the world is going and the direction the world must press India and Pakistan to take. Pakistan has said repeatedly that it will join if India does, so the situation can still be reversed, even after Pakistan's tests.
Sanctions are the best hope of getting there. President Clinton should adopt a broad ban on high technology and convince U.S. allies to join. At a minimum, it would sever the technological lifeline that has always sustained the South Asian nuclear and missile effort. That alone would be a worthy achievement. It would prevent the Commerce Department from licensing more mass destruction.
And because a cutoff would ban much civilian high technology as well, India in particular would be deprived of what it needs to modernize its industry and armed forces. After a few years, India would face the technology gap that doomed the Warsaw Pact.
India's tests were a reckless maneuver by a shaky government to shore up domestic political support. The tests left Pakistan little choice but to answer in kind. When the aftershocks die down, and more rational heads prevail, the path away from the bomb will open once again.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
India pose threat to nuclear test ban treaty - World, News - The Independent
India pose threat to nuclear test ban treaty
CHRISTOPHER BELLAMY Defence Correspondent
Friday, 21 June 1996
India yesterday said it would not sign the global nuclear test ban treaty until the existing nuclear weapons states committed themselves to eliminating their nuclear arsenals within roughly a decade. India's opposition threatens to derail the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations, which are due to finish on 28 June or, if the agreement is signed, to prevent it ever taking effect.
The country said it would remain at the negotiations, but its opposition - as one of the three "nuclear threshold" states, with Pakistan and Israel - could delay adoption of the treaty for which negotiators have been striving for almost 40 years. India is one of eight countries - the five declared nuclear powers and three "threshold" powers - which the official nuclear powers want to ratify the treaty before it comes into force. India also refused to accept that provision yesterday.
The official nuclear powers believe that unless the treaty becomes law in the threshold states, which have nuclear weapons (Israel), or could build them easily (India and Pakistan), it will be meaningless.
India's Foreign Minister, IK Gujral, said: "The treaty as it has been drafted is a charade. If we want to rid the world of these weapons, then it is the five powers which have the weapons that have to do something." The stand means that the five nuclear-weapons states will have to make some concession to India, including a commitment not to build new nuclear weapons and a timetable for eventual nuclear disarmament. Either this or let the CTBT come into force without India.
The first discussion of an international nuclear test ban treaty began in 1958, and some arms control campaigners fear that if the 28 June deadline is not met, 40 years of work to reach a ban will have been in vain. But diplomatic sources last night said a further delay would not kill the treaty. India signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963, which prohibited tests in the atmosphere. In 1974, it conducted a so-called "peaceful nuclear explosion" under the Rajasthan desert,but since then has not exploded a nuclear device. The US State Department, however, warned that India could have been preparing to conduct a test there earlier this year.
Assembing a workable nuclear device quickly shouldpose no difficulty to India. Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars since 1947, has a proven missile-warhead design and could also assemble weapons quickly. India envisages keeping separated components of nuclear weapons that can be assembled for a "second strike" in response to attack by Pakistan or China.
When the CTBT was first proposed, a ban on testing would have acted as an effective constraint on the development of new weapons by the established nuclear powers and on nuclear proliferation. To ensure new nuclear weapons worked it was necessary to test them, and the nuclear stockpiles, too, to check they still worked. However, modern computer simulation techniques have made tests unnecessary. France's nuclear tests in the Pacific last year were the last, and Monday's agreement between France and the US to share nuclear data has further obviated the need for tests.
Some experts also question whether India would need to test nuclear weapons. Pravin Sawhney, a former Indian Army officer and a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said India could, without tests, build "boosted- fission" devices - nuclear fission bombs with a fusion component similar to the first British "H-bombs", and with a yield of up to 500 kilotons.
"The Indian government has invested heavily in super-computing and related software," Mr Sawhney wrote in the Institute's journal.
India pose threat to nuclear test ban treaty
CHRISTOPHER BELLAMY Defence Correspondent
Friday, 21 June 1996
India yesterday said it would not sign the global nuclear test ban treaty until the existing nuclear weapons states committed themselves to eliminating their nuclear arsenals within roughly a decade. India's opposition threatens to derail the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations, which are due to finish on 28 June or, if the agreement is signed, to prevent it ever taking effect.
The country said it would remain at the negotiations, but its opposition - as one of the three "nuclear threshold" states, with Pakistan and Israel - could delay adoption of the treaty for which negotiators have been striving for almost 40 years. India is one of eight countries - the five declared nuclear powers and three "threshold" powers - which the official nuclear powers want to ratify the treaty before it comes into force. India also refused to accept that provision yesterday.
The official nuclear powers believe that unless the treaty becomes law in the threshold states, which have nuclear weapons (Israel), or could build them easily (India and Pakistan), it will be meaningless.
India's Foreign Minister, IK Gujral, said: "The treaty as it has been drafted is a charade. If we want to rid the world of these weapons, then it is the five powers which have the weapons that have to do something." The stand means that the five nuclear-weapons states will have to make some concession to India, including a commitment not to build new nuclear weapons and a timetable for eventual nuclear disarmament. Either this or let the CTBT come into force without India.
The first discussion of an international nuclear test ban treaty began in 1958, and some arms control campaigners fear that if the 28 June deadline is not met, 40 years of work to reach a ban will have been in vain. But diplomatic sources last night said a further delay would not kill the treaty. India signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963, which prohibited tests in the atmosphere. In 1974, it conducted a so-called "peaceful nuclear explosion" under the Rajasthan desert,but since then has not exploded a nuclear device. The US State Department, however, warned that India could have been preparing to conduct a test there earlier this year.
Assembing a workable nuclear device quickly shouldpose no difficulty to India. Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars since 1947, has a proven missile-warhead design and could also assemble weapons quickly. India envisages keeping separated components of nuclear weapons that can be assembled for a "second strike" in response to attack by Pakistan or China.
When the CTBT was first proposed, a ban on testing would have acted as an effective constraint on the development of new weapons by the established nuclear powers and on nuclear proliferation. To ensure new nuclear weapons worked it was necessary to test them, and the nuclear stockpiles, too, to check they still worked. However, modern computer simulation techniques have made tests unnecessary. France's nuclear tests in the Pacific last year were the last, and Monday's agreement between France and the US to share nuclear data has further obviated the need for tests.
Some experts also question whether India would need to test nuclear weapons. Pravin Sawhney, a former Indian Army officer and a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said India could, without tests, build "boosted- fission" devices - nuclear fission bombs with a fusion component similar to the first British "H-bombs", and with a yield of up to 500 kilotons.
"The Indian government has invested heavily in super-computing and related software," Mr Sawhney wrote in the Institute's journal.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
Boeing to certify Indian supercomputer
Boeing to certify Indian supercomputer
April 16th, 2008 - 8:31 pm ICT by admin -
New Delhi, April 16 (IANS) The Boeing Company said Wednesday it is partnering with Computational Research Laboratory (CRL), a subsidiary of the Tata Group, to test and validate one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, the Indian-made Eka system. “The Eka system is the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world and the fastest in Asia as rated by the International Conference for High Performance Computing Networking Storage and Analysis and will be used by CRL to run a programme that will model high lift aerodynamic simulations in three dimensions for Boeing,” the company statement said.
“As part of the collaboration, Boeing has shared information with CRL on the processes needed to conduct numerical simulations on high lift aerodynamics. Boeing will also provide CRL with wind tunnel and flight test data for comparison purposes,” the statement added.
High lift aerodynamic simulations play a critical role in the design and development of airplane wings by simulating how shapes and structures respond to airflows.
“The Boeing-Tata partnership is strong and growing. This collaboration with Tata is another example of the mutually beneficial partnerships that Boeing is developing in India,” said Ian Thomas, president of Boeing India.
“Through such high value interactions, Indian industry is entering Boeing’s global aerospace supply chain,” he added.
“In keeping with our pioneering tradition, the Tata Group has set up Computation Research Laboratories to achieve a position of global leadership in high-performance computing,” CRL chairman S. Ramadorai said.
“CRL is delighted to partner with Boeing to provide design and simulation support to accelerate Boeing’s research ideas to markets,” he added.
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. Headquartered in Chicago, Boeing employs more than 160,000 people across the United States and in 70 countries.
CRL is an integrated “atoms-to-applications” provider of solutions to end-users of high performance computing (HPC).
Set up as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., CRL is engaged in innovation in all areas of HPC with a firm focus on providing path-breaking solutions from an applications perspective.
With a strong network of industrial and university partners, CRL is poised to effect a paradigm-shift in all areas of science and technology, engineering, business, finance, economics, media and entertainment and areas yet to be thought of.
Boeing to certify Indian supercomputer
April 16th, 2008 - 8:31 pm ICT by admin -
New Delhi, April 16 (IANS) The Boeing Company said Wednesday it is partnering with Computational Research Laboratory (CRL), a subsidiary of the Tata Group, to test and validate one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, the Indian-made Eka system. “The Eka system is the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world and the fastest in Asia as rated by the International Conference for High Performance Computing Networking Storage and Analysis and will be used by CRL to run a programme that will model high lift aerodynamic simulations in three dimensions for Boeing,” the company statement said.
“As part of the collaboration, Boeing has shared information with CRL on the processes needed to conduct numerical simulations on high lift aerodynamics. Boeing will also provide CRL with wind tunnel and flight test data for comparison purposes,” the statement added.
High lift aerodynamic simulations play a critical role in the design and development of airplane wings by simulating how shapes and structures respond to airflows.
“The Boeing-Tata partnership is strong and growing. This collaboration with Tata is another example of the mutually beneficial partnerships that Boeing is developing in India,” said Ian Thomas, president of Boeing India.
“Through such high value interactions, Indian industry is entering Boeing’s global aerospace supply chain,” he added.
“In keeping with our pioneering tradition, the Tata Group has set up Computation Research Laboratories to achieve a position of global leadership in high-performance computing,” CRL chairman S. Ramadorai said.
“CRL is delighted to partner with Boeing to provide design and simulation support to accelerate Boeing’s research ideas to markets,” he added.
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. Headquartered in Chicago, Boeing employs more than 160,000 people across the United States and in 70 countries.
CRL is an integrated “atoms-to-applications” provider of solutions to end-users of high performance computing (HPC).
Set up as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., CRL is engaged in innovation in all areas of HPC with a firm focus on providing path-breaking solutions from an applications perspective.
With a strong network of industrial and university partners, CRL is poised to effect a paradigm-shift in all areas of science and technology, engineering, business, finance, economics, media and entertainment and areas yet to be thought of.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://beyond-nature.blogspot.com/2008/10/eka-fastest-supercomputer-in-asia.html
EKA - The Fastest SuperComputer in Asia
India has surprisingly broken into the Top Ten in a much-fancied twice-yearly list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, marking a giant leap in its push towards becoming a global IT power.
EKA (the Sanskrit name for number one) is a supercomputer ranked as the 8th fastest in the world and fastest in Asia as of June 2008, according to the Top 500 Supercomputer list built by Hewlett-Packard.
The supercomputer built at the Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) by Hewlett-Packard facility at Pune, India, marked a milestone in the Tata Group's effort to build an indigenous high-performance computing solution. CRL built the supercomputer facility using dense data centre layout and novel network routing and parallel processing library technologies developed by its scientists. It was reported to have cost $30 million dollars to build.
Ashwin Nanda, who heads the CRL, told the conference that its supercomputer had been built with HP servers using Intel chips with a total of 14,240 processor cores. The system went operational last month and achieved a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
It is the first supercomputer to have been developed totally by a corporation without any government help, now shares the rarefied heights of supercomputing with two American and one German supercomputer.
Eka is an important milestone because it almost restarts the train of supercomputing in India, which stalled after the PARAM supercomputers developed by the C-DAC. "It is a team effort rather than an individual's effort. This has put India on the world map and brought a national sense of pride," said S Ramadorai, chairman, CRL, and also the CEO of India's largest software firm, TCS. TCS is a key partner in the entire supercomputer project.
The project was also important because it was done with a small work-force and with global partners like Hewlett Packard, Intel and Mellanox. But the most noteworthy achievement of the team was that it finished the project in time even after CRL lost its technical spearhead, Dr Narendra Karmarkar.
Details:
* System Name: EKA
* Site: Computational Research Laboratories, TATA SONS
* System Family: HP Cluster Platform 3000BL
* System Model: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c
* Computer: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband
* Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
* Application area: Not Specified
* Installation Year: 2007
* Operating System: Linux
* Interconnect: Infiniband DDR
* Processor: Intel EM64T Xeon 53xx (Clovertown) 3000 MHz (12 GFlops)
Proposed Applications:
Supercomputers are typically used for highly calculation problem solving in quantum mechanical physics, molecular modeling, weather forecasting and climate research, and physical simulation including that of nuclear tests.
The term supercomputer is quite relative. It was first used in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators IBM made for Columbia University. The supercomputers of the 1970s are today's desktops.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
Having developed the machine, the Tata group is busy developing a marketing strategy for it. "In another six-nine months, we would be able to build applications and a software library, following which we would take the offering to commercial use," Raju Bhinge, chief executive, Tata Strategic Management Group — a Tata Group company involved in the development of the facility in Pune told ET. CRL's capabilities are currently being used by another Tata Group company, Tata Elixsi for high speed animation rendering work. CRL is also looking at newer opportunities in the weather forecasting, automotive crash simulation, computational fluid dynamics in aerospace sector, gaming and animation and drug discovery among many others.
According to company officials, CRL has already been in touch with the likes of Boeing and Airbus for its aerospace applications and there is also interest from Tata Motors for its crash testing application. S Ramadorai, CEO & MD of TCS one of the partners for CRL and chairman of CRL said that the company was also in discussion with a host of government agencies as well, for the use of its new computing prowess.
EKA - The Fastest SuperComputer in Asia
India has surprisingly broken into the Top Ten in a much-fancied twice-yearly list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, marking a giant leap in its push towards becoming a global IT power.
EKA (the Sanskrit name for number one) is a supercomputer ranked as the 8th fastest in the world and fastest in Asia as of June 2008, according to the Top 500 Supercomputer list built by Hewlett-Packard.
The supercomputer built at the Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) by Hewlett-Packard facility at Pune, India, marked a milestone in the Tata Group's effort to build an indigenous high-performance computing solution. CRL built the supercomputer facility using dense data centre layout and novel network routing and parallel processing library technologies developed by its scientists. It was reported to have cost $30 million dollars to build.
Ashwin Nanda, who heads the CRL, told the conference that its supercomputer had been built with HP servers using Intel chips with a total of 14,240 processor cores. The system went operational last month and achieved a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
It is the first supercomputer to have been developed totally by a corporation without any government help, now shares the rarefied heights of supercomputing with two American and one German supercomputer.
Eka is an important milestone because it almost restarts the train of supercomputing in India, which stalled after the PARAM supercomputers developed by the C-DAC. "It is a team effort rather than an individual's effort. This has put India on the world map and brought a national sense of pride," said S Ramadorai, chairman, CRL, and also the CEO of India's largest software firm, TCS. TCS is a key partner in the entire supercomputer project.
The project was also important because it was done with a small work-force and with global partners like Hewlett Packard, Intel and Mellanox. But the most noteworthy achievement of the team was that it finished the project in time even after CRL lost its technical spearhead, Dr Narendra Karmarkar.
Details:
* System Name: EKA
* Site: Computational Research Laboratories, TATA SONS
* System Family: HP Cluster Platform 3000BL
* System Model: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c
* Computer: Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband
* Vendor: Hewlett-Packard
* Application area: Not Specified
* Installation Year: 2007
* Operating System: Linux
* Interconnect: Infiniband DDR
* Processor: Intel EM64T Xeon 53xx (Clovertown) 3000 MHz (12 GFlops)
Proposed Applications:
Supercomputers are typically used for highly calculation problem solving in quantum mechanical physics, molecular modeling, weather forecasting and climate research, and physical simulation including that of nuclear tests.
The term supercomputer is quite relative. It was first used in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators IBM made for Columbia University. The supercomputers of the 1970s are today's desktops.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
Having developed the machine, the Tata group is busy developing a marketing strategy for it. "In another six-nine months, we would be able to build applications and a software library, following which we would take the offering to commercial use," Raju Bhinge, chief executive, Tata Strategic Management Group — a Tata Group company involved in the development of the facility in Pune told ET. CRL's capabilities are currently being used by another Tata Group company, Tata Elixsi for high speed animation rendering work. CRL is also looking at newer opportunities in the weather forecasting, automotive crash simulation, computational fluid dynamics in aerospace sector, gaming and animation and drug discovery among many others.
According to company officials, CRL has already been in touch with the likes of Boeing and Airbus for its aerospace applications and there is also interest from Tata Motors for its crash testing application. S Ramadorai, CEO & MD of TCS one of the partners for CRL and chairman of CRL said that the company was also in discussion with a host of government agencies as well, for the use of its new computing prowess.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs/articles/1990/thirdworldbomb.htm
Designing the Third World Bomb
by Gary Milhollin
Wisconsin Academy Review
Winter 1990-1991, p.15-18
The conflict in the Gulf should refocus attention on a frightening fact of modern life: Third World tyrants, armed with missiles and A-bombs, are fast replacing the Soviets as the greatest threat to American security.
Yet at the same time, a small group of government officials may heighten that threat by approving the export of U.S. supercomputers to Brazil, Israel, and India, three countries with secret nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. If the officials — undersecretaries at the State and Commerce departments — succeed, they will reverse the Reagan policy of keeping these machines away from countries that are trying to get the bomb.
In Brazil, the supercomputers could hasten the day when a nuclear-capable missile is sold to Libya or Iraq and hasten the day when Brazil finally tests the nuclear weapon it is trying to produce. In Israel, the supercomputers could design smaller, lighter nuclear warheads to attack more targets and could reduce the time required before an Israeli missile brings Moscow within range. In India, the supercomputers could hasten the day when Indian ICBMs will threaten all of China with hydrogen bombs.
Is a Supercomputer Really Necessary?
The supercomputer was invented in the mid-1970s to design U.S. nuclear weapons. It since has become the most powerful tool known for designing both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Today no U.S. nuclear or missile design is physically tested until it is optimized through computer simulations.
A supercomputer can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates a nuclear warhead, calculate the multiplication of neutrons in an explosive chain reaction, and solve the equations of state that describe fusion in a hydrogen bomb. To design a nuclear weapon, the designer first runs —on a supercomputer—the proposed design through the equations that govern its performance. Then the design is assembled and exploded underground. Afterward, the test data are fed back into the supercomputer, which must predict how the design will perform in the real world, above ground.
A supercomputer can also model the burning surface of a solid-fuel rocket, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the atmosphere, and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact. To design a missile, the designer creates a mathematical model of fluid flow, puts the proposed design on a computer-generated grid, and then calculates the forces affecting air particles at discrete points around the body. This technique helped design the hull of the Stars and Stripes, the boat that returned the Americas Cup to the United States. It also helped design the combustion chamber of the main engine of the space shuttle. Because of the billions of computations needed to solve these problems, a supercomputer's speed is invaluable for finding design solutions in a practical length of time.
The lack of a supercomputer will not stop a country from making its first atomic bomb. But with a supercomputer, a country can design more efficient nuclear warheads with a minimum of tests and design long-range missiles to carry the warheads to their destination. For countries with limited money and manpower, these advantages are crucial.
The proponents of the exports argue that there were no supercomputers when the first bombs were built, and thus a supercomputer is not the key to going nuclear. But in the early days the lack of computing power was made up for by tests. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that about 180 physical tests were needed to design the high-explosive part of a 1955-vintage nuclear weapon. Today fewer than five tests are needed because of computation. To show modern computation's power, DOE used a Cray supercomputer to replicate the Manhattan Project design, the yield of which could not be determined in the 1940s without a test. The Cray, however, calculated the correct yield in twenty minutes. According to DOE, a team of scientists using the calculators of the 1940s would take five years to do what a Cray supercomputer now does in one second.
Unsavory Recipients
IBM wants to sell a supercomputer to Embraer, an arm of the Brazilian Air Force in the missile-for-export business. Through its ownership in another firm called Orbita, Embraer is now trying to turn Brazil's Sonda IV space launcher into an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missile. In January 1988, Libyan arms buyers offered to pay Orbita's development costs in exchange for long-range missiles and the means to make them. Brazil publicly rebuffed U.S. protests of the Libyan offer.
Embraer is also part of a Brazilian team that has been helping Iraq make long-range missiles, and that could help Iraq make nuclear weapons. According to Brazilian press reports, confirmed by U.S. officials, the Brazilian team has trained the Iraqis in rocket aerodynamics, flight testing, and the control of rocket trajectories. The team also has helped Iraq improve its Soviet-supplied Scud-B missiles— the same missiles Iraq used to bombard the civilian population of Teheran. Embraer exchanges personnel with the research arm of the Brazilian Air Force, called CTA, which West German intelligence says is secretly making nuclear weapon material. CTA, also part of the Brazilian team in Iraq, could gain access to the supercomputer through Embraer and share nuclear calculations with its Iraqi customers.
The University of Sao Paulo is IBM's second intended Brazilian customer. West German intelligence says that one of the university's own institutes is designing centrifuges to enrich uranium — a step leading to atomic bombs. Also on the university campus is a group called [PEN, which has secretly built lab-scale centrifuges, has built a lab-scale plant for extracting plutonium (the nuclear weapon material that destroyed Nagasaki), and is planning a secret reactor that will create enough plutonium for one atomic bomb per year. All this is being done with university personnel, who will be able to run bomb designs on the U.S. supercomputer.
Cray — America's other supercomputer giant — wants to sell a machine to Technion University, the Israeli MIT. In 1987 a Pentagon-sponsored study revealed that Technion was helping design Israel's ballistic missile re-entry vehicle. And, according to U.S. officials, Technion's nuclear physicists work at Israel's secret nuclear weapon complex at Dimona, where an Israeli reactor makes plutonium for atomic bombs. According to a Technion brochure, the Cray that Technion wants to buy will be able to do in one month calculations that now take eight years.
Hebrew University would also get a supercomputer. The Pentagon study found that its physicists work at Israel's nuclear weapon lab at Soreq, which is using computer codes similar to the Pentagon's for designing nuclear weapons. The study frankly said that Soreq's scientists were "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs." It said that the Israelis "are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in the 1950s." It added, however, that the Israelis did "not yet have the capability to carry out the necessary calculations" for hydrogen bombs. A U.S. supercomputer would provide exactly that capability.
The Weizmann Institute, the third Israeli applicant, is similar to Hebrew University. The institute's scientists are studying the high energy physics and hydrodynamics needed for nuclear bomb design and the use of lasers to enrich uranium, the most advanced method for making nuclear weapon material. The whole faculty would have access to the U.S. supercomputer.
All of the proposed Israeli recipients pose an additional risk: cooperation with South Africa. NBC News reported in October 1989 that Israel is helping South Africa build and test long-range missiles. In return, Israel receives money and the ability to test its own long-range missiles over the empty ocean off the South African coast. To enable its missiles to reach their full range — which will cover Moscow and Western Europe — Israel needs an accurate re-entry vehicle. This is exactly what a U.S. supercomputer could help design. Israel might even decide to share the supercomputer with its South African customers.
In India, U.S. supercomputers would go to the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Both are doing rocket research. They are studying stresses on rocket bodies, the performance of solid rocket fuel mixtures, and supersonic combustion. There is even a project to study the performance of solid rocket fuel through computer modelling. All this learning will go straight into missiles. When India launched its first intermediate range missile in 1989, it used a first stage solid fuel rocket produced by the space program. Thus, Indian missiles could profit directly from the U.S. supercomputers.
In May 1989, CIA director William Webster told a congressional committee that India appeared to be working on a hydrogen bomb. Over the next few years, India will be trying to perfect an efficient fusion warhead and an accurate long-range missile to carry it. The U.S. supercomputers could powerfully aid both endeavors.
India also presents a second risk: diversion to the Soviet Union. Soviet personnel by the thousands permeate Indian industry and science. The Soviet military, India's primary and long-time supplier, has contacts throughout the country. U.S. officials are worried about Soviet access to the supercomputer. In cryptography, a supercomputer's high-speed calculations are used to break codes. U.S. intelligence officers were second in line after the bomb designers to use the first Cray. If the Soviets gained access to one of the Indian supercomputers, they could carry out intelligence operations now beyond their reach.
Security Plans
To justify the sales, the proponents are proffering computer security plans. Someone, whose identity and competence is yet to be defined, could visit computer sites to see who had used the computer and for what. The problem is that the plans can't really work. Embraer is free to design aircraft—to compute fluid flows around aircraft noses, fuselages, and wings. But the computations are basically the same as the ones for fluid flows around the noses, bodies, and fins of missiles. Hebrew University is free to study nuclear fusion by using exactly the same hydrodynamic and radiation transport codes one needs to design hydrogen bombs. It would be an extraordinary inspection that could detect a violation under such conditions.
All of the machines would be furnished on a "multi-user, multi-use" basis. India has already received a Cray supercomputer under a security plan, but it is a "single-user, single-use" machine set up to forecast monsoons. Operated by the Indian Weather Bureau, it runs a single program and receives only one kind of data. Any other program or data could be detected readily by an audit. Brazil too has received a supercomputer — an IBM — under a security plan, and it too is a single-user, single-use machine. It is set up to receive only seismic data for oil exploration. Its use for another purpose could also be detected readily through an audit.
The machines now proposed would be available to a wide range of users for many purposes. At the University of Sao Paulo, Technion, Hebrew University, and the Indian institutes, the machines would be available generally to faculty members. Each faculty includes persons who work on missiles or nuclear weapons, or who work with other researchers who do. The ability to run a variety of programs using a variety of data would make effective inspection impossible.
To make matters worse, Brazil, Israel, and India are already violating inspection agreements made in the past. In order to import West German nuclear equipment, Brazil promised to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that the equipment was not used to make atomic bombs. However, Brazil has prevented inspection by refusing to report a single one of the numerous German deliveries over the past ten years. In order to import heavy water to run its Dimona reactor, Israel promised to allow Norway to verify that the water would not be used to make atomic bombs. However, Israel has repeatedly rejected Norway's demands for inspection and is obviously breaking its pledge not to use the water for bombs. In order to import two reactors from the United States for its site at Tarapur, India promised to restrict all the reactors' plutonium to peaceful use. However, India is now threatening to declare the plutonium — enough for about 320 Nagasaki-sized bombs — free for use in nuclear weapons because of an implausible interpretation of the nuclear sales agreement.
In October 1988, a congressional investigation revealed what Israel really might do with a U.S. supercomputer. After being denied access to the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, two Israelis used a friendly U.S. technician to gain access to one of the lab's Cray supercomputers. They called in on an access line from the technician's garage. The purpose of the access? To work on a design for nuclear weapon detonation, which they accomplished before leaving the United States.
Risk vs. Revenue
Not only would inspection be inadequate, it would be costly. The sale to Embraer is worth only $400,000 — the price of two "vector processors." The processors would raise Embraces existing IBM mainframe to supercomputer speed. If U.S. government inspectors ever were to visit Brazil, and go there several times a year for the next few years (which would be necessary for an adequate inspection), the costs would easily exceed the profits from the sale. U.S. taxpayers would thus foot the bill for IBM's decision to sell computers to people whose promises are suspect.
The computer makers argue that the growth market is now overseas, but the sales figures tell a different story. Cray has sold about 140 supercomputers in the United States and exported about 100 to developed countries and NATO allies — none of which is a proliferation risk. Each machine has a security plan. IBM is estimated to have sold about 300 vector processors to the same market. Compared to these sales, the prospective handful to the proliferators is a drop in the bucket. To get the drop, however, the exporters seem ready to put the whole world at risk.
To avoid such a risk, the U.S. Commerce Department has issued specific regulations. Five criteria determine whether a country has the "non-proliferation credentials" needed to import U.S. computers: whether the country belongs to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whether the country has all of its nuclear activities under international inspection, whether the country has an agreement for nuclear cooperation with the United States, whether the country's public statements and policies support the goal of nuclear non-proliferation, and whether the country is generally cooperative on non-proliferation policy matters. Brazil, Israel, and India do not meet a single one of these criteria. This was why the Reagan administration wouldn't approve the exports.
Keeping the Faith
The proposed sales would make a mockery of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy. The United States is now trying to stop France from selling the technology for the "Viking" rocket motor — a powerful, ICBM-sized booster — to Brazil. The United States justly fears that Brazil will use it to make an intercontinental missile. Can the United States still credibly oppose the sale, after hawking supercomputers to the very Brazilians who make such missiles? Approximately two years ago, the United States stopped West Germany from helping Libya build a poison gas plant. Could the United States credibly do that again, after selling supercomputers to the very Israelis who are working on hydrogen bombs?
If the need to restrain France and Germany were not enough, there is the need to restrain Japan. In 1984, the United States and Japan — the only supercomputer suppliers— agreed not to sell supercomputers to developing countries that had rejected the non-proliferation treaty. In 1986 they renewed the agreement. All of the proposed exports would breach that accord. If the United States does break faith with Japan by making these deals, the result could be a no-holds-barred race to sell supercomputers to the Third World. Moreover, the loss of the Japan accord would make it impossible to bring new suppliers into it. This would be a disaster for U.S. non-proliferation policy and for world security.
The Commerce Department is already chipping away at the Japan agreement. It wants to raise the agreement's definition of a supercomputer from 100 to several hundred megaflops (million floating-point operations per second — a measure of mathematical computing speed). This would let the University of Sao Paulo get its machine (110 megaflops) without a security plan. The more cautious Japanese want to stay at 100. To justify the new definition, IBM and Cray say that their lower-end machines are now nearing the 100 megaflop threshold. Soon, they say, workstations will have near-supercomputer speed. Thus, the argument goes, the limit should be raised to reflect the advance of technology. By the same logic, however, they should argue that the MX missile is better than the early Atlas, that the neutron bomb is better than our earlier fission devices, and therefore we should sell Atlas missiles and fifties-vintage A-bomb designs to the Third World.
Commerce and State, the departments pushing the deal, are suffering from export-mania and lobbying. IBM and Cray lobbyists have flooded Washington and pressured as many Bush officials as they could find. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency — with the help of the Pentagon and the Department of Energy — is holding out, still determined to follow the export rules.
George Bush promised after his election to work "every day" against nuclear and missile proliferation. If he really meant that, he must now tell his appointees to hold the line on supercomputers.
Designing the Third World Bomb
by Gary Milhollin
Wisconsin Academy Review
Winter 1990-1991, p.15-18
The conflict in the Gulf should refocus attention on a frightening fact of modern life: Third World tyrants, armed with missiles and A-bombs, are fast replacing the Soviets as the greatest threat to American security.
Yet at the same time, a small group of government officials may heighten that threat by approving the export of U.S. supercomputers to Brazil, Israel, and India, three countries with secret nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. If the officials — undersecretaries at the State and Commerce departments — succeed, they will reverse the Reagan policy of keeping these machines away from countries that are trying to get the bomb.
In Brazil, the supercomputers could hasten the day when a nuclear-capable missile is sold to Libya or Iraq and hasten the day when Brazil finally tests the nuclear weapon it is trying to produce. In Israel, the supercomputers could design smaller, lighter nuclear warheads to attack more targets and could reduce the time required before an Israeli missile brings Moscow within range. In India, the supercomputers could hasten the day when Indian ICBMs will threaten all of China with hydrogen bombs.
Is a Supercomputer Really Necessary?
The supercomputer was invented in the mid-1970s to design U.S. nuclear weapons. It since has become the most powerful tool known for designing both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Today no U.S. nuclear or missile design is physically tested until it is optimized through computer simulations.
A supercomputer can simulate the implosive shock wave that detonates a nuclear warhead, calculate the multiplication of neutrons in an explosive chain reaction, and solve the equations of state that describe fusion in a hydrogen bomb. To design a nuclear weapon, the designer first runs —on a supercomputer—the proposed design through the equations that govern its performance. Then the design is assembled and exploded underground. Afterward, the test data are fed back into the supercomputer, which must predict how the design will perform in the real world, above ground.
A supercomputer can also model the burning surface of a solid-fuel rocket, calculate the heat and pressure on a warhead entering the atmosphere, and simulate virtually every other force affecting a missile from launch to impact. To design a missile, the designer creates a mathematical model of fluid flow, puts the proposed design on a computer-generated grid, and then calculates the forces affecting air particles at discrete points around the body. This technique helped design the hull of the Stars and Stripes, the boat that returned the Americas Cup to the United States. It also helped design the combustion chamber of the main engine of the space shuttle. Because of the billions of computations needed to solve these problems, a supercomputer's speed is invaluable for finding design solutions in a practical length of time.
The lack of a supercomputer will not stop a country from making its first atomic bomb. But with a supercomputer, a country can design more efficient nuclear warheads with a minimum of tests and design long-range missiles to carry the warheads to their destination. For countries with limited money and manpower, these advantages are crucial.
The proponents of the exports argue that there were no supercomputers when the first bombs were built, and thus a supercomputer is not the key to going nuclear. But in the early days the lack of computing power was made up for by tests. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that about 180 physical tests were needed to design the high-explosive part of a 1955-vintage nuclear weapon. Today fewer than five tests are needed because of computation. To show modern computation's power, DOE used a Cray supercomputer to replicate the Manhattan Project design, the yield of which could not be determined in the 1940s without a test. The Cray, however, calculated the correct yield in twenty minutes. According to DOE, a team of scientists using the calculators of the 1940s would take five years to do what a Cray supercomputer now does in one second.
Unsavory Recipients
IBM wants to sell a supercomputer to Embraer, an arm of the Brazilian Air Force in the missile-for-export business. Through its ownership in another firm called Orbita, Embraer is now trying to turn Brazil's Sonda IV space launcher into an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missile. In January 1988, Libyan arms buyers offered to pay Orbita's development costs in exchange for long-range missiles and the means to make them. Brazil publicly rebuffed U.S. protests of the Libyan offer.
Embraer is also part of a Brazilian team that has been helping Iraq make long-range missiles, and that could help Iraq make nuclear weapons. According to Brazilian press reports, confirmed by U.S. officials, the Brazilian team has trained the Iraqis in rocket aerodynamics, flight testing, and the control of rocket trajectories. The team also has helped Iraq improve its Soviet-supplied Scud-B missiles— the same missiles Iraq used to bombard the civilian population of Teheran. Embraer exchanges personnel with the research arm of the Brazilian Air Force, called CTA, which West German intelligence says is secretly making nuclear weapon material. CTA, also part of the Brazilian team in Iraq, could gain access to the supercomputer through Embraer and share nuclear calculations with its Iraqi customers.
The University of Sao Paulo is IBM's second intended Brazilian customer. West German intelligence says that one of the university's own institutes is designing centrifuges to enrich uranium — a step leading to atomic bombs. Also on the university campus is a group called [PEN, which has secretly built lab-scale centrifuges, has built a lab-scale plant for extracting plutonium (the nuclear weapon material that destroyed Nagasaki), and is planning a secret reactor that will create enough plutonium for one atomic bomb per year. All this is being done with university personnel, who will be able to run bomb designs on the U.S. supercomputer.
Cray — America's other supercomputer giant — wants to sell a machine to Technion University, the Israeli MIT. In 1987 a Pentagon-sponsored study revealed that Technion was helping design Israel's ballistic missile re-entry vehicle. And, according to U.S. officials, Technion's nuclear physicists work at Israel's secret nuclear weapon complex at Dimona, where an Israeli reactor makes plutonium for atomic bombs. According to a Technion brochure, the Cray that Technion wants to buy will be able to do in one month calculations that now take eight years.
Hebrew University would also get a supercomputer. The Pentagon study found that its physicists work at Israel's nuclear weapon lab at Soreq, which is using computer codes similar to the Pentagon's for designing nuclear weapons. The study frankly said that Soreq's scientists were "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs." It said that the Israelis "are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in the 1950s." It added, however, that the Israelis did "not yet have the capability to carry out the necessary calculations" for hydrogen bombs. A U.S. supercomputer would provide exactly that capability.
The Weizmann Institute, the third Israeli applicant, is similar to Hebrew University. The institute's scientists are studying the high energy physics and hydrodynamics needed for nuclear bomb design and the use of lasers to enrich uranium, the most advanced method for making nuclear weapon material. The whole faculty would have access to the U.S. supercomputer.
All of the proposed Israeli recipients pose an additional risk: cooperation with South Africa. NBC News reported in October 1989 that Israel is helping South Africa build and test long-range missiles. In return, Israel receives money and the ability to test its own long-range missiles over the empty ocean off the South African coast. To enable its missiles to reach their full range — which will cover Moscow and Western Europe — Israel needs an accurate re-entry vehicle. This is exactly what a U.S. supercomputer could help design. Israel might even decide to share the supercomputer with its South African customers.
In India, U.S. supercomputers would go to the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Both are doing rocket research. They are studying stresses on rocket bodies, the performance of solid rocket fuel mixtures, and supersonic combustion. There is even a project to study the performance of solid rocket fuel through computer modelling. All this learning will go straight into missiles. When India launched its first intermediate range missile in 1989, it used a first stage solid fuel rocket produced by the space program. Thus, Indian missiles could profit directly from the U.S. supercomputers.
In May 1989, CIA director William Webster told a congressional committee that India appeared to be working on a hydrogen bomb. Over the next few years, India will be trying to perfect an efficient fusion warhead and an accurate long-range missile to carry it. The U.S. supercomputers could powerfully aid both endeavors.
India also presents a second risk: diversion to the Soviet Union. Soviet personnel by the thousands permeate Indian industry and science. The Soviet military, India's primary and long-time supplier, has contacts throughout the country. U.S. officials are worried about Soviet access to the supercomputer. In cryptography, a supercomputer's high-speed calculations are used to break codes. U.S. intelligence officers were second in line after the bomb designers to use the first Cray. If the Soviets gained access to one of the Indian supercomputers, they could carry out intelligence operations now beyond their reach.
Security Plans
To justify the sales, the proponents are proffering computer security plans. Someone, whose identity and competence is yet to be defined, could visit computer sites to see who had used the computer and for what. The problem is that the plans can't really work. Embraer is free to design aircraft—to compute fluid flows around aircraft noses, fuselages, and wings. But the computations are basically the same as the ones for fluid flows around the noses, bodies, and fins of missiles. Hebrew University is free to study nuclear fusion by using exactly the same hydrodynamic and radiation transport codes one needs to design hydrogen bombs. It would be an extraordinary inspection that could detect a violation under such conditions.
All of the machines would be furnished on a "multi-user, multi-use" basis. India has already received a Cray supercomputer under a security plan, but it is a "single-user, single-use" machine set up to forecast monsoons. Operated by the Indian Weather Bureau, it runs a single program and receives only one kind of data. Any other program or data could be detected readily by an audit. Brazil too has received a supercomputer — an IBM — under a security plan, and it too is a single-user, single-use machine. It is set up to receive only seismic data for oil exploration. Its use for another purpose could also be detected readily through an audit.
The machines now proposed would be available to a wide range of users for many purposes. At the University of Sao Paulo, Technion, Hebrew University, and the Indian institutes, the machines would be available generally to faculty members. Each faculty includes persons who work on missiles or nuclear weapons, or who work with other researchers who do. The ability to run a variety of programs using a variety of data would make effective inspection impossible.
To make matters worse, Brazil, Israel, and India are already violating inspection agreements made in the past. In order to import West German nuclear equipment, Brazil promised to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that the equipment was not used to make atomic bombs. However, Brazil has prevented inspection by refusing to report a single one of the numerous German deliveries over the past ten years. In order to import heavy water to run its Dimona reactor, Israel promised to allow Norway to verify that the water would not be used to make atomic bombs. However, Israel has repeatedly rejected Norway's demands for inspection and is obviously breaking its pledge not to use the water for bombs. In order to import two reactors from the United States for its site at Tarapur, India promised to restrict all the reactors' plutonium to peaceful use. However, India is now threatening to declare the plutonium — enough for about 320 Nagasaki-sized bombs — free for use in nuclear weapons because of an implausible interpretation of the nuclear sales agreement.
In October 1988, a congressional investigation revealed what Israel really might do with a U.S. supercomputer. After being denied access to the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, two Israelis used a friendly U.S. technician to gain access to one of the lab's Cray supercomputers. They called in on an access line from the technician's garage. The purpose of the access? To work on a design for nuclear weapon detonation, which they accomplished before leaving the United States.
Risk vs. Revenue
Not only would inspection be inadequate, it would be costly. The sale to Embraer is worth only $400,000 — the price of two "vector processors." The processors would raise Embraces existing IBM mainframe to supercomputer speed. If U.S. government inspectors ever were to visit Brazil, and go there several times a year for the next few years (which would be necessary for an adequate inspection), the costs would easily exceed the profits from the sale. U.S. taxpayers would thus foot the bill for IBM's decision to sell computers to people whose promises are suspect.
The computer makers argue that the growth market is now overseas, but the sales figures tell a different story. Cray has sold about 140 supercomputers in the United States and exported about 100 to developed countries and NATO allies — none of which is a proliferation risk. Each machine has a security plan. IBM is estimated to have sold about 300 vector processors to the same market. Compared to these sales, the prospective handful to the proliferators is a drop in the bucket. To get the drop, however, the exporters seem ready to put the whole world at risk.
To avoid such a risk, the U.S. Commerce Department has issued specific regulations. Five criteria determine whether a country has the "non-proliferation credentials" needed to import U.S. computers: whether the country belongs to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whether the country has all of its nuclear activities under international inspection, whether the country has an agreement for nuclear cooperation with the United States, whether the country's public statements and policies support the goal of nuclear non-proliferation, and whether the country is generally cooperative on non-proliferation policy matters. Brazil, Israel, and India do not meet a single one of these criteria. This was why the Reagan administration wouldn't approve the exports.
Keeping the Faith
The proposed sales would make a mockery of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy. The United States is now trying to stop France from selling the technology for the "Viking" rocket motor — a powerful, ICBM-sized booster — to Brazil. The United States justly fears that Brazil will use it to make an intercontinental missile. Can the United States still credibly oppose the sale, after hawking supercomputers to the very Brazilians who make such missiles? Approximately two years ago, the United States stopped West Germany from helping Libya build a poison gas plant. Could the United States credibly do that again, after selling supercomputers to the very Israelis who are working on hydrogen bombs?
If the need to restrain France and Germany were not enough, there is the need to restrain Japan. In 1984, the United States and Japan — the only supercomputer suppliers— agreed not to sell supercomputers to developing countries that had rejected the non-proliferation treaty. In 1986 they renewed the agreement. All of the proposed exports would breach that accord. If the United States does break faith with Japan by making these deals, the result could be a no-holds-barred race to sell supercomputers to the Third World. Moreover, the loss of the Japan accord would make it impossible to bring new suppliers into it. This would be a disaster for U.S. non-proliferation policy and for world security.
The Commerce Department is already chipping away at the Japan agreement. It wants to raise the agreement's definition of a supercomputer from 100 to several hundred megaflops (million floating-point operations per second — a measure of mathematical computing speed). This would let the University of Sao Paulo get its machine (110 megaflops) without a security plan. The more cautious Japanese want to stay at 100. To justify the new definition, IBM and Cray say that their lower-end machines are now nearing the 100 megaflop threshold. Soon, they say, workstations will have near-supercomputer speed. Thus, the argument goes, the limit should be raised to reflect the advance of technology. By the same logic, however, they should argue that the MX missile is better than the early Atlas, that the neutron bomb is better than our earlier fission devices, and therefore we should sell Atlas missiles and fifties-vintage A-bomb designs to the Third World.
Commerce and State, the departments pushing the deal, are suffering from export-mania and lobbying. IBM and Cray lobbyists have flooded Washington and pressured as many Bush officials as they could find. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency — with the help of the Pentagon and the Department of Energy — is holding out, still determined to follow the export rules.
George Bush promised after his election to work "every day" against nuclear and missile proliferation. If he really meant that, he must now tell his appointees to hold the line on supercomputers.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Program_debugs_nuclear_test_simulations_999.html
Program debugs nuclear test simulations
U.S. scientists say they have created an automated program designed to "debug" the nation's nuclear test computer simulations
.
Purdue University researchers, working with scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said their program, called AutomaDeD (pronounced like automated), finds errors in computer code for complex "parallel" programs.
Because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons, certification is done using complex simulations. The researchers said such simulations, which may contain as many as 100,000 lines of computer code, must accurately show reactions taking place on the scale of milliseconds, or thousandths of a second.
"The simulations take several weeks to run, and then they have to be debugged to correct errors in the code," said Associate Professor Saurabh Bagchi. "The error might have occurred in the first hour of operation, and if you had known about it you could have stopped it then. The idea is to use AutomaDeD as the simulation is running to automatically monitor what's happening.
"If things start going wrong, AutomaDeD would stop and flag which process and which part of the code in the process is likely anomalous."
Recent research findings show AutomatDeD was 90 percent accurate in identifying the time "phase" when bugs occurred, 80 percent accurate in identifying the specific tasks involved and 70 percent accurate in identifying the interference faults.
The research will be presented June 30 in Chicago during the 40th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks.
Program debugs nuclear test simulations
U.S. scientists say they have created an automated program designed to "debug" the nation's nuclear test computer simulations
.
Purdue University researchers, working with scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said their program, called AutomaDeD (pronounced like automated), finds errors in computer code for complex "parallel" programs.
Because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons, certification is done using complex simulations. The researchers said such simulations, which may contain as many as 100,000 lines of computer code, must accurately show reactions taking place on the scale of milliseconds, or thousandths of a second.
"The simulations take several weeks to run, and then they have to be debugged to correct errors in the code," said Associate Professor Saurabh Bagchi. "The error might have occurred in the first hour of operation, and if you had known about it you could have stopped it then. The idea is to use AutomaDeD as the simulation is running to automatically monitor what's happening.
"If things start going wrong, AutomaDeD would stop and flag which process and which part of the code in the process is likely anomalous."
Recent research findings show AutomatDeD was 90 percent accurate in identifying the time "phase" when bugs occurred, 80 percent accurate in identifying the specific tasks involved and 70 percent accurate in identifying the interference faults.
The research will be presented June 30 in Chicago during the 40th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks.
Pintu
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2009
- Messages
- 12,082
- Likes
- 353
India's New Supercomputer 'Annapurna' launched by DAE
DAE has launched new Super Computer Annapurna , link , report and image courtesy
eccan Herald .
DAE has launched new Super Computer Annapurna , link , report and image courtesy
eccan Herald .Regardshttp://www.deccanherald.com/content/84922/dae-unveils-supercomputer.html
DAE unveils supercomputer
Chennai, July 30, DHNS:
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) on Friday added yet another feather to its cap with the inauguration of its latest supercomputer cluster, "Annapurna," at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) here.
The home-built supercomputer, built at a cost of Rs 6 crore, is a major facility for scientists and researchers and one of the fastest in the country.
The induction of the machine "is a major event," said AEC chairman Srikumar Banerjee.
India had years ago begun building such "parallel processors" through a network of institutes amid an "embargo against us", Dr Banerjee said.
While the Tatas have done some strong work in this area, the supercomputers built by the DAE institutes were planned by the "users themselves" which was remarkable, he said.
The latest machine has been designed to be fast enough to "meet our application needs over the next five years," he said. "We also wanted it to be versatile to meet diverse user needs, and energy efficiency was a high priority," said Dr Menon.
Last edited:
Pintu
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2009
- Messages
- 12,082
- Likes
- 353
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Supercomputer-Annapurna-unveiled-in-IMSc/Article1-580052.aspx
Supercomputer Annapurna unveiled in IMSc
Press Trust Of India
Chennai, July 30, 2010
First Published: 20:32 IST(30/7/2010)
Last Updated: 20:34 IST(30/7/2010)
India's latest supercomputer 'Annapurna' was unveiled at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai on Friday. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveiled the country's seventh fastest high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity.
Banerjee lauded the technical team behind the effort for creating the super computer in a completely non-commercial domain.
Complex issues ranging from biological applications and others could not have been approached in the absence of a supercomputer, he said.
"Among broad-based scientific institutions in India, the Annapurna cluster is the third fastest, ranking below the IISc Bangalore and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai," an IMSc release said.
The device will be used in simulations and numerical calculations in the areas of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics among others, it added.
Supercomputer Annapurna unveiled in IMSc
Press Trust Of India
Chennai, July 30, 2010
First Published: 20:32 IST(30/7/2010)
Last Updated: 20:34 IST(30/7/2010)
India's latest supercomputer 'Annapurna' was unveiled at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) in Chennai on Friday. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveiled the country's seventh fastest high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity.
Banerjee lauded the technical team behind the effort for creating the super computer in a completely non-commercial domain.
Complex issues ranging from biological applications and others could not have been approached in the absence of a supercomputer, he said.
"Among broad-based scientific institutions in India, the Annapurna cluster is the third fastest, ranking below the IISc Bangalore and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai," an IMSc release said.
The device will be used in simulations and numerical calculations in the areas of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics among others, it added.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.thelatestnews.in/annapur...-computation-hpc-cluster-uncloaked/39968.html
Annapurna India's 7th fastest HPC cluster uncloaked
India is day by day growing and adopting the means of innovation. The Chennai based institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) has now added a new feather in the hat of India's development by introducing the latest supercomputer 'Annapurna'.
On Saturday, Jul 31 the super computer Annapurna makes its debut and at the launch event the Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveils this high performance computer. Mr. Srikumar Banerjee highly appreciated the technical team effort and their hard work for developing the super computer in a completely non-commercial domain.
Annapurna is considered as India's 7th fastest high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity.
The computer will prove itself a boon for simulations and numerical calculations in the areas of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics
Annapurna India's 7th fastest HPC cluster uncloaked
India is day by day growing and adopting the means of innovation. The Chennai based institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) has now added a new feather in the hat of India's development by introducing the latest supercomputer 'Annapurna'.
On Saturday, Jul 31 the super computer Annapurna makes its debut and at the launch event the Atomic Energy Commission chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveils this high performance computer. Mr. Srikumar Banerjee highly appreciated the technical team effort and their hard work for developing the super computer in a completely non-commercial domain.
Annapurna is considered as India's 7th fastest high-performance computation (HPC) cluster having 1.5 Tera Byte (TB) memory and 30 TB storage space cluster capacity.
The computer will prove itself a boon for simulations and numerical calculations in the areas of statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
Scientists use world’s fastest supercomputer to model, simulate nuclear reactors - SmartPlanet
Scientists use world's fastest supercomputer to model, simulate nuclear reactors
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using the world's fastest supercomputer to model and simulate next-generation nuclear power plants.
The premise of the project is to combine existing nuclear energy and nuclear national security modeling and simulation tech with high-performance computing.
The lab's Nuclear Modeling staff are known for developing and applying computational methods and software for simulating radiation to improve the design and safety of nuclear facilities, reactor core designs and nuclear fuel performance.
The team seeks supercomputing as a way to bolster the impact of its nuclear analysis software package, called SCALE.
John Wagner, technical integration manager for nuclear modeling in ORNL's Nuclear Science and Technology division, explains the value:
Traditionally, reactor models for radiation dose assessments have considered just the reactor core, or a small part of the core. However, we're now simulating entire nuclear facilities, such as a nuclear power reactor facility with its auxiliary buildings and the ITER fusion reactor, with much greater accuracy than any other organization that we're aware of.
The supercomputer in question? ORNL's Jaguar, the world's fastest supercomputer, running on a next-generation software package called Denovo, created by NSTD scientist Tom Evans.
Denovo was awarded 8 million processor hours on Jaguar by the DOE Office of Science's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program to develop "a uniquely detailed simulation of the power distribution inside a nuclear reactor core."
The added computing power will help researchers design more accurate models with better shielding, improving safety and reducing costs.
"Software for modeling radiation transport has been around for a long time, but it hadn't been adapted to build on developments that have revolutionized computational science," Evans said in a statement. "There's no special transformational technology in this software; but it's designed specifically to take advantage of the massive computational and memory capabilities of the world's fastest computers."
Scientists use world's fastest supercomputer to model, simulate nuclear reactors
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using the world's fastest supercomputer to model and simulate next-generation nuclear power plants.
The premise of the project is to combine existing nuclear energy and nuclear national security modeling and simulation tech with high-performance computing.
The lab's Nuclear Modeling staff are known for developing and applying computational methods and software for simulating radiation to improve the design and safety of nuclear facilities, reactor core designs and nuclear fuel performance.
The team seeks supercomputing as a way to bolster the impact of its nuclear analysis software package, called SCALE.
John Wagner, technical integration manager for nuclear modeling in ORNL's Nuclear Science and Technology division, explains the value:
Traditionally, reactor models for radiation dose assessments have considered just the reactor core, or a small part of the core. However, we're now simulating entire nuclear facilities, such as a nuclear power reactor facility with its auxiliary buildings and the ITER fusion reactor, with much greater accuracy than any other organization that we're aware of.
The supercomputer in question? ORNL's Jaguar, the world's fastest supercomputer, running on a next-generation software package called Denovo, created by NSTD scientist Tom Evans.
Denovo was awarded 8 million processor hours on Jaguar by the DOE Office of Science's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program to develop "a uniquely detailed simulation of the power distribution inside a nuclear reactor core."
The added computing power will help researchers design more accurate models with better shielding, improving safety and reducing costs.
"Software for modeling radiation transport has been around for a long time, but it hadn't been adapted to build on developments that have revolutionized computational science," Evans said in a statement. "There's no special transformational technology in this software; but it's designed specifically to take advantage of the massive computational and memory capabilities of the world's fastest computers."
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.defencetalk.com/russia-to-test-its-nuclear-deterrent-with-supercomputers-20641/
Russia to test its nuclear deterrent with supercomputers
SAROV: Russia's Security Council will discuss a series of projects on the development of supercomputers to test the effectiveness of the country's nuclear deterrent, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday.
"Under the global ban on nuclear tests, we can only use computer-assisted simulations to ensure the reliability of Russia's nuclear deterrent," Medvedev said at a meeting of a commission on the modernization of Russian economy.
"Therefore, the most powerful supercomputers will be placed in federal nuclear centers," he said.
Medvedev said the All-Russia Research Institute of Experimental Physics in Sarov, where the meeting took place, will develop by 2011 a computer capable of simultaneously conducting one quadrillion operations.
"We have allocated the necessary sum of over 2.5 billion rubles [about $80 mln], which is no small sum of money, and we are planning to develop this direction along with technological advancements in computer sciences," the president said.
Russia to test its nuclear deterrent with supercomputers
SAROV: Russia's Security Council will discuss a series of projects on the development of supercomputers to test the effectiveness of the country's nuclear deterrent, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday.
"Under the global ban on nuclear tests, we can only use computer-assisted simulations to ensure the reliability of Russia's nuclear deterrent," Medvedev said at a meeting of a commission on the modernization of Russian economy.
"Therefore, the most powerful supercomputers will be placed in federal nuclear centers," he said.
Medvedev said the All-Russia Research Institute of Experimental Physics in Sarov, where the meeting took place, will develop by 2011 a computer capable of simultaneously conducting one quadrillion operations.
"We have allocated the necessary sum of over 2.5 billion rubles [about $80 mln], which is no small sum of money, and we are planning to develop this direction along with technological advancements in computer sciences," the president said.
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-...-supercomputer-verifying-U-S-nuke-reliability
'Roadrunner' supercomputer verifying U.S. nuke reliability
PORTLAND, Ore. — Los Alamos National Laboratory is using the world's fastest supercomputer, dubbed "Roadrunner," to run extremely accurate simulations to verify the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Over the last six months, Roadrunner proved its mettle working on 10 unclassified projects that advanced the state-of-the-art in astrophysics, plasma physics, nanotechnology, magnetic reconnection and materials science.
"We had a few crashes, but that's what this six-month shakeout period was for," said a Los Alamos National Lab spokesperson. "After proving it out on a variety of scientific projects, we are now ready to put Roadrunner to work on our classified projects, primarily to assure the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent."
'Roadrunner' supercomputer verifying U.S. nuke reliability
PORTLAND, Ore. — Los Alamos National Laboratory is using the world's fastest supercomputer, dubbed "Roadrunner," to run extremely accurate simulations to verify the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Over the last six months, Roadrunner proved its mettle working on 10 unclassified projects that advanced the state-of-the-art in astrophysics, plasma physics, nanotechnology, magnetic reconnection and materials science.
"We had a few crashes, but that's what this six-month shakeout period was for," said a Los Alamos National Lab spokesperson. "After proving it out on a variety of scientific projects, we are now ready to put Roadrunner to work on our classified projects, primarily to assure the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent."
LETHALFORCE
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2009
- Messages
- 29,968
- Likes
- 48,929
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-has-simulation-capability-ntests-not-need.../511402/
'India has simulation capability, N-tests not needed'
Joining issue with an ex-DRDO scientist that Pokhran-II was not a full success and India needs to go for a few more nuclear tests, Atomic Energy commission chief Anil Kakodkar on Wednesday said the country has strong simulation capability and that additional tests were not required.
"We have enough data. We have comprehensive simulation capability and therefore there is no need for any more tests," Kakodkar said, days after K Santhanam ignited a controversy that Pokhran-II was a fizzle and did not give the desired yield. "We are very confident about the simulation capability,"
Indian nuclear scientists had already validated and bench marked the validated tool of the three dimensional simulation for earth motion and displacement data collected following Pokhran II tests in 1998, he said.
"We used the data of Beneberry nuclear tests of US of December 18,1970 to validate our 3-D simulation for earth motion and displacement and this validated tool was used for bench marking," Kakodkar said.
There is no need for series of tests to validate the yield since the tool and also observations are available, he said adding that it was published in the international journal Nuclear Technology in 2006 four years after its communication from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
Scaling up of nuetronic calculation can always be done, he said adding that all the observations and calculations were done by scientists from BARC.
'India has simulation capability, N-tests not needed'
Joining issue with an ex-DRDO scientist that Pokhran-II was not a full success and India needs to go for a few more nuclear tests, Atomic Energy commission chief Anil Kakodkar on Wednesday said the country has strong simulation capability and that additional tests were not required.
"We have enough data. We have comprehensive simulation capability and therefore there is no need for any more tests," Kakodkar said, days after K Santhanam ignited a controversy that Pokhran-II was a fizzle and did not give the desired yield. "We are very confident about the simulation capability,"
Indian nuclear scientists had already validated and bench marked the validated tool of the three dimensional simulation for earth motion and displacement data collected following Pokhran II tests in 1998, he said.
"We used the data of Beneberry nuclear tests of US of December 18,1970 to validate our 3-D simulation for earth motion and displacement and this validated tool was used for bench marking," Kakodkar said.
There is no need for series of tests to validate the yield since the tool and also observations are available, he said adding that it was published in the international journal Nuclear Technology in 2006 four years after its communication from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).
Scaling up of nuetronic calculation can always be done, he said adding that all the observations and calculations were done by scientists from BARC.
shuvo@y2k10
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2010
- Messages
- 2,653
- Likes
- 6,710
i am sure that india is in a position to simulate nuclear weapons and even design weapons with yields in mega tons thanks to our supercomputing capability.but that doesn't mean that we will sign the ctbt.india should grow a stockpile of nuclear warheads with high yields to counter similar pakistani moves.also india can go in for confirmatory physical test say 20 years from now when we will fully master the thorium cycle and don't have to depend on uranium imports for civilian reactors.
nrj
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2009
- Messages
- 9,658
- Likes
- 3,911
1. Why 20years later?
2. And why not now?
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2011
- Messages
- 3,947
- Likes
- 7,779
Very reliable. Calculations which are required to simulate an atomic explosion are already known to us. The supercomputers are required to make the calculations and solve the equations for us. If there is no inherent flaw in the programming, reliability is extremely high.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2011
- Messages
- 3,947
- Likes
- 7,779
Absolutely correct. Its high time every defence agency raises their own cyber warfare division.
shuvo@y2k10
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2010
- Messages
- 2,653
- Likes
- 6,710
well there is no problem if india goes for nuclear test now apart from a little fuss from china,pakistan,america,eu,nsg but the problem is that after signing the nuclear deal with US manmohan singh has entangled our strategic nuclear programme in a spiders web.many country will impose restictions on us and the civilian nuclear sector depends heavily on uranium imports until india perfects the thoriunm cycle.
