back to article NASA on track to triple Discover super's grunt

The rolling upgrade at NASA's Centre for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is nearing completion, with the agency just about ready to flick the switch on the second of three new SGI systems. The upgrade project, which was won by SGI (canned announcement) in November 2014, will when it's complete replace the former IBM machine – with …

  1. Bloodbeastterror

    Off-topic

    This is how every article should look - starting with the text I want to read and not some vaguely-related picture dredged desperately from some image bin...

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Trollface

      Re: Off-topic

      This is how every article should look...

      Now you've done it! The editors read these comments, and will be moving to screw this one up too fix it shortly. Then again, maybe they think the very annoying drop-down menus are distracting enough in this instance and will leave it alone. What are the odds?

    2. Graham Marsden
      Thumb Up

      Re: Off-topic

      Unfortunately it's probably just an error or an oversight and we'll soon be back to having to scroll down past a ridiculous and often irrelevant "Hero Image" on an article before we actually get to the details...

    3. Lysenko

      Re: Off-topic

      http://m.theregister.co.uk/

      Works fine on a desktop, side steps vast JPG insertions.

      1. Bloodbeastterror

        Re: Off-topic

        @Lysenko

        Thanks - excellent... :-)

      2. mi1400

        Re: Off-topic

        Dear Lysenko I salute ur contribution in this regard... I just need to contribute further that using m./mobile domain .. occasionally u would be missing a picture not used in article body.. this picture is not funny or satirical but deeply relevant to article... the recent examples I can quote are...

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/28/sandisk_soups_up_fusion_flash_cards/

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/29/aookied_micro_q4_2015_results/

        in both cases If u used m./mobile domain .. u will miss an important piece of information in form of diagram of picture... I would advice to go in XPath/Autopager or JS in addressbar. to rip out only article's main element (getbyelementid in JS)... cheers!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "....replace the former IBM machine – with 35,500-plus Intel Xeon cores – to more than 64,500 Haswell cores, each with 4 GB-plus of memory"

    Have they never heard of the ZX81? Couple of those, a telly, and a thermal printer, job done.

    1. Elmer Phud

      ZX81?

      Think big -- Spectrum with a Micro Drive!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All that power..

    I'm glad to see NASA is planning ahead - that's will probably run Windows 11 without any further upgrade :)

    Joking aside, does anyone know what sort of code these machines run? To get the benefit of massive parallel programming strikes me as requiring a different code model, just to make sure that all these little subprocesses are kept in sync when they return with results. I am admittedly seriously out of date on this stuff - I'm more a networking guy, and the last time I looked at parallel programming was in the days of Occam :)

    1. fishman

      Re: All that power..

      They typically use Message Passing Interface (MPI).

  4. Mark 85

    There's a fly in the ointment

    The proposed budget for NASA has some cuts in it. The biggest one being the "earth sciences' budget. It looks like the Repubs are living in climate change denial and don't want NASA proving them right or wrong. So... this may not be completed unless NASA juggles their budget.

  5. Alistair
    Coat

    I thought they were..........

    Going with a stack of PS3s and funky headgear...........

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