[ Thanks to Ostracus for this link. ]
“Los Alamos National Laboratory is buying a $6 million,
2,048-processor Linux supercomputer to run its nuclear weapons
simulation software, an effort that will test the limits of these
less expensive megamachines.“The lab has been a pioneer in building inexpensive
supercomputers made out of ordinary computing components and the
Linux operating system. Thus far, however, LANL’s nuclear weapons
simulation software runs on more expensive systems from SGI and
Hewlett-Packard such as HP’s $215 million ‘Q’ now under
construction.“A $6 million price tag may sound like a bargain in comparison,
but software must be reworked to run using less expensive clusters
of Linux machines. Though the new system will run unclassified
programs such as predicting the properties of new materials, those
tests will serve as a proxy to predict how well nuclear weapons
simulation software works, said lab spokesman Jim
Danneskiold…”