World's most powerful computer

[panzerkw]

I didn't know weather forecasting required such powerful computers, but apparently a machine capable of 5 trillion operations a second isn't enough. This one (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/06/tech/main557424.shtml) will eventually reach a speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. I wonder if those mainframe techs ever get to game on those machines. wheeee.....:eek:

[Clutch]

The deal is expected to cost about $200 million over nine years. :banghead:

[panzerkw]

Must be an Intel machine

[danball1976]

Maybe its an Opteron system.

[Geeky1]

nah... the opeteron would only be $100 million
gotta be xeons or P4s :D

[primesuspect]

so, are they gonna fold on it, or what?

[Red Dawn]

heatindex = 16.923 + 0.185212*t + 5.37941*rh -
0.100254*t*rh + (0.941695e-2)*t2 + (0.728898e-2)*rh2 + (0.345372e-3)*t2*rh -
(0.814971e-3)*t*rh2 + (0.102102e-4)*t2*rh2 - (0.38646e-4)*t3 + (0.291583e-4)*rh3 +
(0.142721e-5)*t3*rh + (0.197483e-6)*t*rh3 - (0.218429e-7)*t3*rh2 + (0.843296e-9)*t2*rh3 -
(0.481975e-10)*t3*rh3

taken from here (http://members.aol.com/Accustiver/wxworld_calc.html)

theres just a few there but i've seen larger more head fryin equations for the weather elsewhere

[danball1976]

That seems like a rather complex equation. Wonder how long it would take to calculate that on a regular computer

[panzerkw]

Doesn't look like it would take very long actually. It's not like the computer has to take into effect several factors which could affect alot of other stuff (like it would have to when being used for forecast hurricanes) and calculate all the possibilities.

[danball1976]

Such as how big the numbers being input are.

[panzerkw]

I don't think it's so much the size of the numbers that would trip it up, but just that there are so many numbers that need to be crunched. I'm assuming this computer would also have to model and extrapolate possible future activity with the current data. I'd imagine to be pretty intensive operations, especially when it'd have to display all the different possibilities and how WHY a possible result would be possible mathematically.

[Red Dawn]

even when it works out all the possible outcomes for the data its fed it was to work out which senario is most likely to occur based on previous weather observations.

[leishi85]

Red Dawn said
even when it works out all the possible outcomes for the data its fed it was to work out which senario is most likely to occur based on previous weather observations.

then what does those weather guy do??
damn weather guys

[panzerkw]

Nowadays, I think most of them spend their time taking all the data and putting it together a presentation for the news forecast that day. Basically making sense of the tons of info and condesing it for normal people to understand.

And, making all those cute smily face suns and other crap.

[dNA3D]

Would be cool if they used that machine to fold for a team currently in 7th place.

:respect: :fold:

[WuGgaRoO]

man...200 million dollars and they still cant get it righ huh?