US spooks to build 60 megawatt data center The Obama administration might have been wrestling mightily with a recalcitrant Republican Congress high on strong tea over the US government's fiscal 2012 budget, which had tens of billions of dollars in spending slashed, but the one thing that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that the National Security Agency …
that they are examining Bin Laden's computer -- ''Guys, he has been encrypting his data, we are gonna need some powerful computers to decrypt it -- just to keep you safe you understand, we would not think of using this do decrypt friendly communications''.
@"60 megawatts" ... and ... $860.6m "cost for the facility alone, not the cost of the servers, storage, and networking gear that will inhabit the data center."
What the hell are they building?!
Lets put this into context. Only 25 of the top 500 super computers in the world need more than 1MW of power. e.g. http://www.top500.org/list/2010/11/100
The number 2 most powerful supercomputer (DOE/SC/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) only needs 7 megawatts of power, thats the most power usage of any super computer so far. The number 1 in china only needs 4 megawatts.
So what kind of monster supercomputer are they building?!
Plus this is for the NSA ... So what kind of Orwellian super computer master plan are they working on now!
Those Top 500 figures are the power consumption of the hardware, with no allowance for the inevitable cooling requirements. And they're only the ones people are prepared to go public with - I don't see any existing NSA kit in that list.
On top of which, you spec the max power of your data centre to handle the largest load you expect to see over its lifetime. You don't want to buy your fancy new ubercomputer, only to be told: sorry that exceeds our power capacity.
The top 500 public super computers in the world would be more accurate. The NSA and NRO are organizations that provide nor are they required to provide much public detail about their activities. If the NSA was to build or had already built a system capable of being in the 10 it is unlikely that they would ever make that information public.
"has about 100,000 of data center floor space and comprises over 1 million of total space."
- I'm sure it's a commonly used unit, but which unit of measurement? 100,000 miles? 1 million carrots?
"These machines pair the ThreadStorm processors, designed by Burton Smith and James Rottsolk,..."
- Pair them with what?
Although
It does make one wonder exactly what they need all this processing power for, though - considering they've not even finished their previous 65 megawatt Salt Lake project
NSA is the listening post, sitting up there in the Maryland suburbs, taking it all in. It doesn't do active intelligence/espionage in the field with agents, or "spooks" as you so quaintly call them. That word, btw, has racist connotations and hasn't been in use in a long time. Just call them spies, but only when they work for the CIA.
...here in the UK is commonly used to refer to spies, with no racists overtones.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/spooks/episodeguide.shtml
I don't recall spooks ever being used in a racist way here although it may well have been. On the other hand, it was used in the past as a derogatory way to describe Spiritualists.
It may have overtones of racism in the USofA, but then a lot of words have different meanings in that version of english. I did snigger a bit the first time I heard "fanny pack"
Paris? Well, I'm sure she could burn through 65MW
who are looking to any excuse to pick a fight. And yes, I live within 30 miles of Ft. Meade.
Actually, the location probably adds 20 to 30% to the cost of building the new facility compared to the Salt Lake Facility. In these parts, making $65K/year is around the mean wage-wise.
U.S. English* does use spook as a racial term.
But not at this level of discourse.
At this abstraction level the term spook implies a damn near alien gray (one hopes a more friendly grey colored (coloured) one, because the entire concept of colour becomes somewhat suspect.
*Ironically, I live within 10 miles of English.
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