
US Just Picked Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Others to Help Make Supercomputers 50x Faster - rbanffy
https://www.fastcompany.com/40431777/the-us-just-picked-intel-ibm-nvidia-and-others-to-help-make-supercomputers-50-times-faster
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noahdesu
Given (1) the importance of HPC (both scientific and strategic), (2) the size
(man-power, gov. agencies, universities, and companies), scope (new hardware,
energy, software), and length of this project (approaching a decade), and (3)
international competition with (at least) European and Chinese exascale
efforts, the $258 million dollars seems quite paltry.

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Judgmentality
I ask this in all seriousness - is IBM still relevant today? I don't actually
know how they make most of their money. I assume it comes from legacy
enterprise support. The last I heard about them was Watson years ago, and I
don't think they ever successfully monetized that?

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taylorexpander
Well, in terms of high performance computing, IBM makes the BlueGene series of
supercomputers. These computers currently occupy the #4 and #9 on the Top500…

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rbanffy
4, 9, 19, 21, 56, 68, 99 and 100 from the top 100 of the list.

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sctb
Recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14564945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14564945)

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webtechgal
> The best-case scenario is a system that consumes 20 megawatts...

I guess they will think of throwing in a windmill farm (or something) to power
the beast.

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kbutler
...and make it a wind-cooled system, so you have cooling that scales with
available power!

Yeah, that will get the subsidies!

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ianbertolacci
Too bad they've only committed 86 million $/year to the effort...

