The Supercomputing Race
Today’s New York Times features an article on Racing to build the world’s mightiest computer, pointing out that both China and Japan recently announced plans to break the petaflop barrier, as did a French company, and that several U.S. computer companies are also in the race. The article also points out that the United States typically puts its most powerful computers to work on classified tasks, rather than making them available for open research:
While the United States has regained the lead in supercomputing achievement, its researchers have benefited unevenly. The armed forces and intelligence agencies have traditionally commanded the very largest computing systems here, for example, while other countries have devoted their speediest computers to other efforts, notably research on climate change.
