From the Atomic City Underground Blog of knoxvillenews.com comes word that a big kahuna of komputing is about to go online.
The Cray XK6 supercomputer is a trifecta of scalar, network and many-core innovation. It combines Cray’s proven Gemini interconnect, AMD’s leading multi-core scalar processors and NVIDIA’s powerful many-core GPU processors to create a true, productive hybrid supercomputer. Here’s the factory photo before customization:
Reporter Frank Munger writes:
Cray recently delivered the final 26 cabinets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Gaea climate research supercomputer, which is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The newly arrived cabinets are loaded with the new AMD 16-core Interlagos processors. According to Jeff Nichols, an associate lab director at ORNL who heads the computational science directorate, the Gaea system is still in two pieces. The first piece is the original 14-cabinet system with a peak capability of 260 teraflops, Nichols said. The second piece is the new 26-cabinet system with a capability of 720 teraflops, he said.
After the first piece is upgraded in the spring and the two pieces are integrated into one system, Gaea will become a 1.1 petaflops supercomputer, ORNL’s computing chief (who returned from a visit to China last week, where he spoke at a conference) said.
Here’s what it looks like at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, note the Earthy graphics:
While that door panel artwork was well received, word has it though, that the artwork was changed to be more representative of the i/o and stage by stage processing that takes place in this new system. Here’s the upgraded artwork and a brief description of what each processing cabinet does:
Below is the guide from left to right: Cabinet number, processing description
1. Input stage: takes data and bags, boxes, and bins it for distribution
2. Mannomatic stage: chooses which data to use, discards inappropriate data, adds proxy data where none exists, splices on new data to data that was truncated in stage 1.
3. Kevinator stage: approves processed data from stage 2, declares it “robust” using a special stamping system.
4. Hansenizer stage: Fits approved data from stage 3 to three model scenarios to match a “best fit”, applies additional corrections to elevate data for use by stage 5.
5. Gavinotron stage: Chooses data from the Giga Hansenized Climate Numbers (GHCN) to combine with Hansenized three scenario data, extrapolates data from 70°N to 90°N to fill the Gaea Global Model.
6. Humbertian Harmonizer Stage: Using bellows, and a random walk, data is wheezed out to stage 7.
7. Karl Konfabulator Stage: Assigns value to the data to report to Congress, ensuring that the data will be more valuable next year. Monitors power use, sends bills out to taxpayers.
8. Peterson Percolator Stage: Collates the data into inaccessible data furrows buried deep underground in Asheville North Carolina where the “secret sauce” is applied before percolating the data back to the surface.
9. Wigley Wombulator Stage: The data is shipped from Asheville to NCAR in Boulder via a secure optical link where the gatekeeper switch of the wombulator decides how much of it to pass onto CRU via the insecure POTS circuit from Boulder to Norwich. Only data with signed non disclosure agreements is passed on.
10. JonesiFOIAler Stage: Data received from the Wigely Wombulator is then hidden, and signed non disclosure agreements for the data are sent to the top of the paper pile in Jones office to be located by Sherpas mounting the paper summit hired by OSU’s Lonnie Thompson at some future date.
11. Briffabrowser stage: Here, the data is examined, and error flags are sent back up the processing line to all other processing stages using email. The other stages reply that the error flags don’t matter, and consensus is reached, allowing the data to be passed on to stage 12 after the emails are made public.
12. MUIRer (Make Up Independent Rationalizations) Russelizer Stage : Data and emails flagging questionable data are noted, given a brief talking to, and then passed on with no questions asked along with a “CERTIFIED A-OK” letter of endorsement.
13. Tiljander Inverter Stage: As a quality control check, Portions of the A-OK Data is inverted by the upside down Mannomatic, looked at in a mirror, then declared still usable.
14. Serializer Stage: The Final A-OK upside down Data is sent to the IPCC, where it is then returned by Indian handmaidens to the potboiling center at Almora, where it is washed repeatedly in hot water.
15. The Osterizer Stage: The IPCC Almora hot water washed data is then blended repeatedly until it reaches a fine homogenized puree.
16. The RealClimatizer Stage: Here the data undergoes public examination under intense scrutiny of thousands of like minded individuals identical processors. Tiny flecks of data that don’t consitute a pure product that may remain are picked off and routed into the borehole disposer.
17: The Cloudifier Stage: Data patterns are compared to an online satellite photo database of clouds to see if there might be any correlation. Any matches are sent back to stage 16 for disposal in the borehole.
18. The SOL Stage: Effects of sunlight on the data are removed.
19. The data is run through the final AlGoreithm, the CLOud and Weather Neutralizer (CLOWN) to ensure the final data has no remaining “weather not climate” residuals, given a happy demeanor and sent on to the final stage.
20. Output Stage: This cabinet, identical to the Input Stage 1, ejects the data in a composted form, suitable for academic consumption.
More information:
Gaea is NOAA’s prime supercomputing resource, and it will become the third petascale machine housed at ORNL. Jaguar, soon to be morphed into Titan, and Kraken, a National Science Foundation machine, are the others.
Cray XK6 Brochure (PDF)
…Claude Harvey’s comment is great, too.
I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time After the 2012 election, “we” will be able to purge Gaea section by section, fraud pod by fraud pod, so that it can supercompute with real history and accurate data for true scientific output. The timing is perfect. It might begin its life during the darkest time of the year, but renewal, the Sun’s promised light, new birth, search for truth, is almost upon us. Thanks, Anthony, and WUWT faithful denizens. A wonderful holiday time to all.
R Barker says:
December 23, 2011 at 6:26 am
Let’s see. 14 +26 = 40 cabinets @ur momisugly about 50kVa per cabinet. That is about 2 million watts of heat that has to be removed presumably with a large air conditioning system. About half of U S juice is coal powered. I wonder if any of those folks are just a tiny bit conflicted about running that thing
No worries – just stick a climate monitoring station near the output of the AC condenser, and they’re still doing good for “The Cause”.
Interesting. Here is what Wiki says about Quantum chromodynamics:
“A huge body of experimental evidence for QCD has been gathered over the years.”
“which were spectacularly verified in experiments at SLAC in 1969”
“This led physicists to abandon the S-matrix approach for the strong interactions”
“culminating in the verification of perturbative QCD at the level of a few percent”
In Physics computers are used to make predictions, which are then verified through experimental observation. When theory does not match observations, theory is discarded and replaced.
In Climate science, when theory does not match observations, the observations are “adjusted” to match the theory.
One is science, the other is not. How can we tell which is which? Like the “People’s Democratic Republic”, when the word “democratic” appears in the name, you can be sure it is not a democracy.
Mark, I think the goal is greater precision. Accuracy is something else, as you point out.
I’m very surprised that NOAA didn’t spring for the optional “Indoctrinator” stage… which takes results and converts them to propaganda for the masses…
None. The guards make them all wear real shoes.
flops – FLoating point Obfuscations Per Second
(This one is for Smokey; another one for your superb collection. Merry Christmas.)
I think they should have considered sustainability when they bought the computer. If you follow this link
http://www.mystique.net/faq.html
you’ll find some nice, sustainable laptops they can buy for the Team, and towards the bottom of the page is an environmentally friendly Super Computer.
Ja, all good, but what’s the frame rate on a 48 inch with BF3 – and what’s their IP address. Lol.
Baloney now available by the tera-flop. GIGO knows no bounds.
One adjustment of data = questionable outcome.
Two adjustments of data to fit = unreliable outcome.
Three adjustments = pure fantasy.
What a cute looking coal-powered calculator.
From the linked PDF … “Power :: 45-54.1 kW (45.9 – 55.2 kVA) per cabinet, depending on configuration Circuit requirements: three-phase wye, 100 AMP at 480/277 and 125 AMP at 400/230 (threephase, neutral and ground).” … We’ll average that to 50 kW per cabinet
From the linked Article … “The first piece is the original 14-cabinet system with a peak capability of 260 teraflops, Nichols said. The second piece is the new 26-cabinet system with a capability of 720 teraflops, he said.” … A total of 40 cabinets
Giving a total of 2000 KW (or 2 MW) for minimum power consumption. Of course this doesn’t address the attached storage and workstations and everything else.
Since it is very easy to find modern wind turbines with a nameplate capacity of 2 MW, one must ask why they do not hook this computer to one and brag about being carbon neutral? Yep, that’s a rhetorical point. What a damn shame what has happened to Oak Ridge, a place once on the cutting edge of atomic energy now reduced to running computers for the climate kooks.
NOAA is just another runaway agency acting like leeches bleeding the taxpayers. These are the experts that classified Irene a landfalling hurricane in spite of empirical evidence and have yet to correct the record. They are the ones that label every single disturbance in the atmosphere a named storm, inflating and skewing the meteorological records to feed the AGW climate cult.
I guarantee that the bean counters never even asked the simple question of whether NOAA can do without this new toy, which is the whole purpose of bean counters in the first place. Face it taxpayers, from the top to the bottom there is almost no-one looking out for you and your money within the District of Criminals nor in its many tentacles. We are nearly past the point where the FedGov monster can be repaired and will have to be completely replaced.
This is clearly a tremendous advance for climate science and humanity, but the most important question is,
will it enable Phil Jones to calculate a trend in Excel?
Who says crime doesn’t pay?
“Charles.U.Farley says:
December 23, 2011 at 1:47 am
1+1=3 the computer says so!”
That is the usual case. But when twins are born, 1 + 1 = 4. However I am sure the new computer can handle all unique cases.
That revised art work looks like a Rogue’s Gallery of Climate Crooks.
Great satire, Anthony. Thanks!
How many angels per pinhead?
I can’t see why they’d stick those pictures on a supercomputer. Seems so contradictory… Let them emblazon a garbage truck instead.
Where’s the stage that figures out which projection produces the most government grant money?
Or delete his email?
No, that’s backwards. Or maybe it’s circular?
Its all very well applying an expensive super computer to the CAGW issue but if its in the hands of warmists putting garbage in it won’t be much use. Giving them a programmable (Texas Instruments) calculator to play with would be just as good and a lot cheaper.
I know quite a bit about the Cray computer series and you have been taken in. That is not the XK6. You have shown here the Cray Z1. Cab #2 is actually used only for storing equipment – mostly hockey sticks.
Which stage erases all original data and emails, then transfers the enhanced data to an IPCC computer that is certified FOIA extempt?