Recent comments in /f/gadgets

nuclear_splines t1_iwid0jw wrote

Reply to comment by Ok-disaster2022 in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek

Yeah, I wasn’t thinking of the code being proprietary, but the data. One of my friends is a nuclear engineer, and as an undergraduate student she had to pass a background check before the DoE would mail her a DVD containing high-accuracy data on measurements of nuclear material, because that’s not shared publicly. Not my background, so I don’t know precisely what the measurements were, but I imagine data on weapons grade materials is protected more thoroughly than the reactor tech she was working with.

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Ok-disaster2022 t1_iwiccqm wrote

Reply to comment by nuclear_splines in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek

Well there's numerous nuclear modeling codes, but one of the biggest most validated is MCNP. The team in charge of it has accepted bug fix reports from researchers around the world regardless if they're allowed to have access to the files and data or not, export control be damned. Hell the most important part is the cross section libraries (which cut out above 2 MeV) and you can access those on public website.

I'm sure there's top secret codes, but it costs millions to build and validate codes and keep them up to date, but there's not profit in nuclear. Aerospace the modeling software is proprietary but that's because it's how those companies make billion dollar airplane deals.

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Ok-disaster2022 t1_iwibhfx wrote

Reply to comment by damattdanman in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek

For some models instead of attempting to derive an sexy formulation you take random numbers, assign them to certain properties for a given particle and other random numbers to have that particle act. Do this billions of times and you cna build a pretty reliable detailed model of weather patterns or nuclear reactors or whatever.

These supercomputers will rarely be used all at once for a single calculation. Instead the different research groups may be given certain amounts of computation resources according to a set schedule. A big deal at DOE SCs is making sure there isn't idle time. It cost millions to power and cool the systems, and letting them run idle is pretty costly. Same can be said for universities and such.

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