Supercomputer belum ada pada waktu para fisikawan
kelas kakap dihimpun di Manhattan Project di gurun Los
Alamos, New Mexico, menjelang berakhirnya Perang Dunia
II, dibawah pimpinan Tyler dan Julius Robert
Oppenheimer. Maka bom atom pertama diledakkan digurun
tandus untuk menguji keampuhannya. Setelah agak
yakin, baru "the big bomb" itu benar-benar dinaikkan
ke pesawat B-17 di Pacific. Operasi itu benar-benar
rahasia, begitu rahasia sehingga sang pilotpun tidak
tahu apa sejatinya "the big bomb" itu. Dia cuma tahu
bahwa dia menjalani misi yang bersejarah. Maka ia
menuliskan dengan huruf besar dan indah kata-kata
"Enola Gay" (nama julukan untuk ibu sang pilot)
dibadan pesawat B-17. The rest is history.
Dengan adanya komputer, bom atom/hidrogin tidak perlu
benar-benar diledakkan di udara terbuka, cukup
diledakkan dibawah tanah, lantas effek ledakannya
diukur.
Dengan adanya super computer, bom hidrogin tidak lagi
perlu diledakkan dibawah tanah, melainkan cukup
disimulasikan saja. Super computer mempunyai kegunaan
ganda (dual purpose), yaitu sipil dan militer.
Makanya Amerika tidak mengijinkan India membeli Cray
supercomputer pada tahun 1988 sebab waktu itu India
masih berhubungan erat dengan Uni Soviet. Segera
India membentuk kelompok kecil untuk membuat
supercomputer. Dalam tempo 3 tahun setelah itu Dr.
Vijay Batra mampu membuat supercomputer sendiri.
Salam,
RM
----------------------------
Scientists to gather for supercomputing feat
By Reuters
http://news.com.com/Scientists+to+gather+for+supercomputing+feat/2100-1010_3-5502055.html
Story last modified Thu Dec 23 05:38:00 PST 2004
Leading nuclear scientists with top security
clearances will gather next summer at a screening room
east of San Francisco and witness the results of the
greatest effort ever in supercomputing.
Using a computer doing 360 trillion calculations a
second, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab
will simulate the explosion of an aging nuclear bomb
in three dimensions. The short, highly detailed video
produced by the world's fastest computer will attempt
to illustrate how missiles dating back to the Nixon
administration would perform today.
"My job...is to ensure that the nuclear weapons in the
stockpile are safe and reliable," said Bruce Goodwin,
associate director for defense and nuclear
technologies. "Safe means no matter what you do to
them they don't go off when they are not supposed to.
Reliable means that should the president ever have to
use one, it will work exactly as it is supposed to."
The United States has about 10,000 nuclear warheads as
a deterrent against attack. Washington stopped real
nuclear tests in 1992, a year after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, and signed the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty in 1996.
That ban means that a huge windowless room at
Livermore is becoming a prime testing ground to make
sure nuclear weapons dating back decades have not
developed fatal flaws.
In a room about half the size of a football field,
BlueGene/L is a series of interconnected 6-foot-high
racks holding 16 modules, each packed with massive
computing power. The first part of BlueGene, built by
IBM, became operational in mid-December at 90 trillion
calculations a second; the rest should be ready by
April.
Even at its ultimate 360 trillion calculations a
second speed, the simulation will take two to four
months, lab officials say. This same calculation would
have taken 60,000 years if done on technology
available a decade ago.
Some analysts say that as impressive as BlueGene is,
test simulations are not as vital in a post-Cold War
world.
"Why are we so focused on calculating or knowing the
differences in performances of weapons?" asked
Christopher Paine, co-director of the nuclear program
at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an
environmental group. "Just as long as we knew we were
above a certain threshold, wouldn't that be enough to
provide deterrence?"
Paine contrasted present U.S. defense needs with those
in the Cold War, when planners needed to make sure
that nuclear weapons would destroy hardened Soviet
targets. "There is less reason to focus on the
accuracy of our simulations," he said. "What we need
to focus on from a deterrent point of view is just
that we have weapons that go off."
Nuclear physicist Goodwin responds that negotiated
cuts in stockpiles in the years to come without newer
replacements make the reliability of any one nuclear
bomb more vital.
"The question we are asking today is, as the stockpile
changes on its own, will it continue to work and be
safe?" he asked.
Scientists say there is a lot they do not know about
the effects of aging on the components of a nuclear
bomb: plutonium, uranium, high explosives, plastic and
gases. For example, will a bomb's plutonium last 50,
100 or 1,000 years?
"They are made out of very corrosive materials,"
Goodwin said. "Yet the charge from the government is
that this warhead--which is made of these materials
which are not happy with each other--should remain
perfectly safe and reliable indefinitely."
Another question is how well the software written to
simulate the atomic explosion will perform. Even the
world's top software engineers routinely release
flaws, and critics say nuclear scientists need more
oversight.
"If this were Microsoft Word, you'd have every hacker
in the world trying to find the bugs," Goodwin said.
"They're doing quality control for Microsoft in a
pejorative sense after the fact. Well, you don't want
there to be 1,000 places capable of doing nuclear
weapons simulations."
He said Livermore's main check came from the U.S.
nuclear weapons research lab at Los Alamos in New
Mexico. Engineers also do more conventional tests,
including taking apart 11 atomic bombs every year,
Goodwin said.
When the nuclear scientists see the
several-minutes-long 3-D simulation from the roughly
$100 million computer next year, will it prove the
most expensive animation ever?
No, lab officials say, pointing to the current
Hollywood film--"Polar Express"--which used computer
animation in a production that cost $270 million to
make and promote.
Reuters
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