Computer operating systems

[Zelandeth]

Little present for my main workstation arrived in the post today...

Here's a closer look.

Not sure when I'll have time to get them fitted, but will be curious to see if there's any really obvious difference compared to the X5355 chips currently in there. Will be maxing the memory out (64Gb) shortly too - no reason not to given how stupidly cheap ECC memory is...

Hard to believe looking at the specs - and how incredibly snappy it is to use (running Mint 19.1 Mate) - that the machine dates from 2006!

[Hell Razor5543]

Anybody seen what has happened in Baltimore? The entire municipal system has been hit by a ransomware attack that has shut it down for a month or so already.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48371476

[Michel]

Anybody seen what has happened in Baltimore? The entire municipal system has been hit by a ransomware attack that has shut it down for a month or so already.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48371476

Serves them right. I see this happening too often. Organisations get warned and told, act complacently, and get stung. Tough. They then pay people like me to fix it, which isn't always possible.

If only they listened to people like me in the first place and protected their systems adequately.

[Gibbo2286]

Must ask my daughter if it's affecting her business, she's a realtor in the locality.

[NewcastleFalcon]

This cropped up on the BBC News so I googled it.

Two suprises for me

• IBM are still alive apparently, and they are still building "computas"
• Total seem to think the Supacomputa wil help them find oil
• I don't understand this banter

"Combined with the increased performance of Pangea III, Total has reported that they have observed that the new system uses less than 10% the energy consumption per petaflop as its predecessor.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... 1028286128

Regards Neil

[Hell Razor5543]

PETAFLOPS = 1 Thousand Trillion Floating Point Operations Per Second (basically how good it is as maths).
Each time the address line of a computer system goes up by 10, it 'switches' name. The sequence is thus; 10 address lines = Kilo, 20 address lines = Mega, 30 address lines = Giga, 40 address lines = Tera, 50 address lines = Peta, and so on. Every time you add 1 address line you double the capacity of the address bus.

https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/de ... d-all-that

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/petaflop

[Michel]

I don't understand this banter.

Nor me Neil, and I've been working in IT since 1992 ...

[NewcastleFalcon]

Pangea III certainly looks well worth it.....just look at the benefits

"Pangea III is being built using the same IBM POWER9 AI-optimized, high-performance architecture as used in the U.S. Department of Energy's Summit and Sierra supercomputers. Because IBM POWER9 is optimized to take advantage of attached accelerators, it is designed to help Total not only improve performance but also improve energy efficiency in their HPC workloads. Pangea III's additional computing power enhances Total's operational excellence."

Not all of that article is gobbledegook for the layman, there is this bit which helps the general public get a handle on just what sort of power this supacomputer has.

"According to Total, Pangea III, which has a computing power of 25 petaflops (equivalent to 130,000 laptops)"

Regards Neil



Regards Neil

[Paul-R]

Well, that cleared everything up.

[Gibbo2286]

PETAFLOPS = 1 Thousand Trillion Floating Point Operations Per Second or PETAFLOPS = 1 Thousand Trillion Floating Point errors Per Second if the operator hits the wrong button.

That was a comment (updated) from the chairman of British Gas when computers first started in use issuing their bills.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Just before we leave, supercomputers and petaflops is their anthing interesting in this?

https://www.top500.org/lists/2019/06/highs/

Yes there is a top 500 list published every six months, the 53rd edition of which shows that all 500 on the list are now petaflop machines, and the 500 on the list now total 1.56 exaflops of computing power 10% up on the previous 6 month report.

So who is in the lead............China of course (219)
Who is a poor second ..........USA (116)

Where is the UK... 5th (18)

With all that power, they will no doubt have "minds of their own" , have to be designed and built by other computers and robots. AI has already arrived I presume, and will only get more widespread.

Regards Neil

[Hell Razor5543]

I remember reading a clever Sci Fi story, in that Mankind had managed to get out amongst the Stars and meet other Interstellar Species. In the story in question one wealthy man got talking to a member of another species about AI. This species had, in the past, managed to make a true AI, but there were issues. This man managed to convince the other person to explain what they did (as he was sure he could make the AI work properly). He spent huge amounts of money, and the AI system DID work for a while, but then it shut down, and nothing they did could keep it turned on for any meaningful amount of time (and the man was now pretty much bankrupt). When he later talked to the species who explained the AI to him he found out that this is what had happened to their AI, and, as far as they could tell, it was because the AI had solved every problem put to it, and then got terminally bored!

[doctle]

I remember reading a clever Sci Fi story, in that Mankind had managed to get out amongst the Stars and meet other Interstellar Species. In the story in question one wealthy man got talking to a member of another species about AI. This species had, in the past, managed to make a true AI, but there were issues. This man managed to convince the other person to explain what they did (as he was sure he could make the AI work properly). He spent huge amounts of money, and the AI system DID work for a while, but then it shut down, and nothing they did could keep it turned on for any meaningful amount of time (and the man was now pretty much bankrupt). When he later talked to the person who explained the AI to him he found out that this is what had happened to their AI, and, as far as they could tell, it was because the AI had solved every problem put to it, and then got terminally bored!

Sounds like something I'd like to read, very Ray Bradbury, do you know who wrote it?

[Hell Razor5543]

Larry Niven, "Convergent Series". Various short stories.

The story "Cruel and Unusual" is not nice. A member of a species is kidnapped by a gang of four men. It turns out that she is allergic to humans (in the way that some humans are allergic to cats, for example). She did not have any medication, and the kidnappers didn't have any either. She died a few days later, as she suffocated. The four kidnappers were handed over to that species, they were tried, and then THEY were suffocated over the same period of time until they died. The attitude of that species is to make the punishment fit the crime.

[doctle]

Eye for an eye!