Stack Overflow

Today’s biggest supercomputers deliver nearly 40 petaflops, using massive clusters of thousands of servers. But the approach will consumer too much power to scale to systems capable of processing 10 18operations/second.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration are rallying support for a so-called Exascale Computing Initiative (ECI). The effort aims to deliver by 2023 systems that consume as little as 20 picojoules per operation, 40 times less than today’s computers.

ECI aims to deliver supercomputers that help secure the US nuclear stockpile and seed the high-tech industry with an array of new technologies. But it is not clear where it will get the hefty funding the project will need before its deadline, tentatively set at the end of 2015.

The two agencies have already spent about $200 million on early projects and plan to spend another $91 million next year. Just how much money is needed to hit its ultimate goal is not yet clear, said William Harrod, head of a scientific computing research group at DoE who is championing the program. He hopes to recruit support from other government agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“This is the time when people need to come together to create a leap forward,” says Thomas Sterling, a supercomputer expert and professor at the Indiana University. “It’s more than any one industry can do, but there’s a lot of friction between government agencies, and a lot of egos” standing in the way, he told EE Times.

In a recent talk, Bill Colwell, a former program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, called for an exascale project along the lines of the US moon landing or the large Hadron Collider. Such a project would be “incredible in scope, investment and vision… [but] I know it’s possible… and [it] might be required to get to the next stage of computer evolution,” Colwell said.

The US DoE hopes by the end of 2015 to determine how much money it will need to fund an exascale computer project and secure the funds. Click here for larger image

Next page: Intel, Nvidia chip away at exascale

Thomson Reuters Pro-democracy protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks walk past policemen on a road occupied by protesters at Mongkok shopping district HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters clashed with police in the densely populated district of Mong Kok early on Thursday as tensions escalated at one of three remaining demonstration sites for the first time in more than two weeks.

Dozens of police armed with batons and shields swept into the area where hundreds of protesters were gathered and scuffles broke out after 2 am local time in the gritty district that has become a flashpoint for ugly street brawls.

More than 30 people wearing grinning masks of Guy Fawkes, who plotted to kill a British king in 1605 and who has become a symbol of anti-capitalist protests, joined the demonstrators who are calling for greater democracy in the former British colony.

The protesters, led by a restive generation of students, have been demanding China’s Communist Party rulers live up to constitutional promises to grant full democracy to the city which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

In August, Beijing offered Hong Kong people the chance to vote for their own leader in 2017, but said only two to three candidates could run after getting backing from a 1,200-person “nominating committee” stacked with Beijing loyalists.

On Wednesday, Regina Ip, a former Hong Kong security chief and a top adviser to the city’s embattled leader proposed members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students be given seats on the committee, broadcaster RTHK reported.

Students are hoping to take their protest to Communist Party rulers in Beijing and are expected to announce details of their new battle plan on Thursday.

Pro-democracy activists plan to march on Sunday from the heart of the city’s financial center to the Chinese central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong.

For more than a month, key roads leading into Hong Kong’s most economically and politically important districts have been barricaded with wood and steel by protesters.

The protests drew well over 100,000 at their peak and are now concentrated in two key areas – the district of Admiralty next to government buildings and across the harbor in Mong Kok.

A handful of protesters remain in the bustling shopping district of Causeway Bay.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying signaled on Tuesday that a much-anticipated plan to link the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets had been delayed as a result of the protests and urged society to pull together to restore order in the city.

(Reporting By Diana Chan and Clare Baldwin, Writing by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Michael Perry)

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This article originally appeared at Reuters. Copyright 2014. Follow Reuters on Twitter.