New Supercomputer

I wouldn't try plugging it into your 120v house plug, with or without back up power you flick that switch and it's lights out baby.

Your welcome mikedl. We can only hope that it will be put to beneficial use, and nothing malevolent. But, as is the usual in these cases there will in all probability be a dark side at some point in its use.

Remember, China's party members have priority.

One case comes to mind:

A few years ago the Science channel had a program on about cratering impacts with a tie-in on the creation of the Moon.

On that program Dr. H. Jay Melosh of the U. of Arizona didn't have a mainframe fast enough to simulate the effects of such an impact, and was relating that fact to a friend that worked at Los Alamos where the first atomic bomb was developed and exploded.

His friend told him that he might be able to help.
A few days later they were both in the computer room at Los Alamos, and all Jay could do was to suggest the various sizes of the impactor, target, and velocities, he wasn't allowed to touch the keyboard.
As he gave the parameters a head would pop-up, then a few more until all other work was suspended until his program was completed.

The computations involved an impactor two thirds the size of the primal Earth that was going to hit Earth four billion years ago.
After the impact the sim was allowed to run for several hundred years after, and lo and behold the Moon was born.
His experiment is now the accepted proof of the creation of the Moon.

In just this short story you have two examples of the good and bad that can be had with the use of computers.


References to Dr. H. Jay Melosh; once with the U. of Arizona, but now with Purdue University:
Deep Impact: Science: Science Team: H. Jay Melosh
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University

An outgrowth of the original Los Alamos experiment:
Earth Impact Effects Program Calculator

Anak Very interesting post, though the main question is have the Chinese managed to create a system (Tianhe-1A) that is "self aware"?

Ich said:

Anak Very interesting post, though the main question is have the Chinese managed to create a system (Tianhe-1A) that is "self aware"?

An interesting philosophical question.
To answer it would require the knowledge to if Tianhe has an artificial neural network.

Some reading:
http://www.pivot.net/~jpierce/thaler_interview.htm
Breakthrough to awareness: a preliminary neural ne... [Biol Cybern. 1996] - PubMed result
Observed Instances of Speciation

It's all the beginning of SKYNET ! Ouhhhhh

How awesome it would be to have 1/100000 of that as a home desktop

Anak, Thought provoking reading. Who /what is to initiate the shape of things to come? Thanks for the links. Ich