IBM to Build Army Supercomputer (Named "Stryker", using Linux)

[Khephra]

The Army will announce today it has contracted with International Business Machines Corp. to build one of the world's fastest supercomputers to help develop more effective weapons systems.

The Defense Department will spend about $15 million on the supercomputer, which will be housed at the Army Research Laboratory's Major Shared Resource Center in Aberdeen, according to Dave Turek, an IBM vice president.

The supercomputer will perform at a peak speed of 10 teraflops, or 10 trillion mathematical operations per second, Turek said. A person with a calculator would need 8 million years to finish calculations the supercomputer can make in one second, he said.

Last week, the Navy selected IBM to build an even faster computer, at a cost estimated at less than $100 million, to produce weather forecasts for fleets at sea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35275-2004Aug2.html

[cprise]

1. Ooooh, very German-sounding

OR.... gay porn :evilgrin:

[Kellanved]

27. Well; Opterons and SuSe Linux

The whole machine is basically made in Germany ;-).

[vincent_vega_lives]

28. Stryker

Name of two Medal of Honor winners.

Private First Class Stuart Stryker, who served with the 513th Parachute Infantry, posthumously received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack near Wesel, Germany that captured more than 200 enemy soldiers and freed three American pilots


Specialist Robert Stryker, who served with the 1st Infantry Division, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the life of his fellow soldiers near Loc Ninh, Vietnam.

[msu2ba]

2. Too bad.....

it probably won't be finished before January. Chimpy will never get to play any video games on it. :argh:

[FDRLincoln]

3. as long as they don't name it

As long as they don't name it something like

"Skynet"
or
"Colossus"
or
"M-5"
or
"HAL"

[CaptainClark23]

6. just a letter away from HAL

H - I
A - B
L - M

[Endangered Specie]

25. Holy Shit! I didnt notice that.

:yikes:

[truthisfreedom]

4. sounds like Stryper, the Christian metal band. crusader alert!

[The_Casual_Observer]

18. Spandex, blbles and red top hats.

[Flint-oid]

5. Jeff Stryker?

Maybe it's an extra long computer

[xchrom]

10. that would be xxx-tra thick, baby!

oh yeah, you go jeff!

[NickB79]

23. Don't even ask

About its increased RAM capacity :-)

[Fuzz]

7. That's the name of the evil military guy in X-Men II

:)

from imdb.com

But soon things start to turn for the worst as an attack on Xavier's mansion is led by Stryker (Brian Cox), the man behind the assassination attempt, who wants all mutants to be killed off. He kidnaps Charles Xavier, and reveals that he wishes for Charles to kill all mutants.

How? By focusing Xavier's psychic powers/telepathy on a particular group of people, Xavier can actually kill them. So Stryker plans to use his disowned mutant son (who also has psychic powers) to control Xavier's mind (sort of) and focus on all the mutants in the world, automatically killing them.

With this plot in motion, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) has little time to free Eric "Magneto," which results in a truly amazing escape sequence which I will not spoil for you.

Now, in an ironic moment, old enemies must fight together to bring down Stryker before his plan follows through. But the band of X-Men are far from solving their problems, as a new mutant, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu) may stand in their way of defeating Stryker. And Wolverine may also find the key to his past in this mess.

[Nevernose]

8. What happened to W.O.P.R.?

Shall we play a game?

[sweetheart]

9. wow, teraflops, the latest weapon

How many teraflops develops a new AK47? None.

It seems the teraflop is a new weapon on its own, suggesting that the computer is doing more than NOOP. :-) ha!

This is cold war disinformation... clue phone bush-AWOL... this is very "last century", for a threat of misinformation. Sounds like you just got your buds at IBM a new fat-cat contract.. no suprise.

Army defense lab invents the fat cat crony contract... film at 11. ;-)

[AngryAmish]

11. Wasn't John Wayne Stryker in "Flying Leathernecks"?

[Sinistrous]

12. Stryker -- isn't that the name of that eight-wheeled death trap

they are trying to use in Iraq?

[leanings]

15. Strykers

are actually doing quite nicely.

[Sinistrous]

16. Oh really? I guess they got all the bugs ironed out of it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030908-121524-2253r.htm

U.S. questions Stryker armor by German firm


By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


The Army has been forced to conduct a new round of live-fire tests on its Stryker infantry vehicle headed for Iraq, after learning a German company had delivered armor plating not previously approved.
The tests against rounds from heavy machine guns began Labor Day weekend at the Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground. At least one sample ceramic tile — which makes up the Stryker's exterior armor to protect soldiers inside — failed, Army officials said.


http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.cfm?Id=908

October 2002
Stryker Not Up to Speed in Some Areas, Soldiers Claim
by Roxana Tiron

The Army’s new eight-wheel drive vehicle appears to meet the service’s overall expectations, but soldiers who participated in recent exercises pointed out several shortcomings in the Stryker that, they said, need to be fixed.

Some of problems the soldiers cited include discomfort caused by intense heat inside the vehicle, the lack of full-color sensors and the high rate of tire damage.

During the Millennium Challenge experiments in the Mojave Desert this summer, soldiers oftentimes operated in temperatures of 100 degrees and above, without any kind of air conditioning system inside the Stryker.


http://www.strykernews.com/archives/2004/02/17/maker_tackles_strykers_weight_problem.html

February 17, 2004
Maker tackles Stryker’s weight problem



Associated Press

ANNISTON, Ala. — Like many recruits, the Army’s new Stryker combat vehicle needs to lose some weight before it’s fit to be deployed.

The Stryker, an armored vehicle being built in Anniston by General Dynamics, was designed to be a medium-weight vehicle that could be sent anywhere in the world within 96 hours.

The original plan was to use the Air Force’s several hundred C-130 aircraft to transport the eight-wheeled vehicles. But thousands of pounds of additional equipment have kept the Strykers heavier than the C-130 payload limits.

"Faulty Armor?
By John Barry, Newsweek Web Exclusive
http://www.msnbc.com/news/962548.asp?0cv=CB10

The Bush administration's military predicament in Iraq has suddenly gotten worse.

JUST A MONTH before the next U.S. Army unit is due to deploy in Iraq to relieve the hard-pressed forces already there, the military is confessing to a potential showstopper. The deploying unit's new armored vehicles may have faulty armor which would leave them vulnerable to machine-gun fire and to the rocket-propelled grenades that are the Iraq insurgents' favorite weapon.
The vehicle is the prized new Stryker wheeled troop carrier, advertised as the first fruit of the Army's plan to transform itself into a lighter, go-anywhere-fast force.

Worse still: the Army has known it might have a problem since February, but has kept quiet about it. An Army memo sent yesterday to the head of the Stryker program, and obtained by NEWSWEEK, reports: "Evidently this issue was first raised in February 2003. Am unsure how this issue escaped public scrutiny for six months." Not even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was told, NEWSWEEK has learned. "Understand that ARSTAF have been told to treat this issue as if it were 'classified'," says the memo, which is addressed to Lt. Gen. John Riggs, the head of the Stryker program. At a recent Army meeting to discuss the faulty armor, the main topic on the agenda, according to a DOD source, was: "How do we tell Secretary Rumsfeld?" Rumsfeld is now in Iraq. According to the memo to Riggs, the Army briefed "selected staffers" on Capitol Hill yesterday.

[psychopomp]

26. Even with the armor built to specs

it still would only take a single RPG shot to blow the armor off leaving the troops inside the carrier vulnerable to deadly enemy fire.

[daleo]

13. How long would it take with an abacus?

Or a slide rule?

[leanings]

14. Named after Ted Stryker

He was a pilot in the war, veteran of the Daiquiri raid. Last I heard he had a drinking problem.

[Occulus]

17. Are they trying to intimidate computer users (esp. linux users)?

It won't work. We linux users have been well aware of distributed computing for some time now.

Let Homeland Security take us on. We'll digitally hand their head to them on a plate.

*a not at all intimidated linux user*

[squidbro]

19. It is probably more in line with the Patriot act

Do you think that that thing could be hacked?

Perhaps it is intended to intimidate those of us who encrypt our email messages with high level encryption (in my case 448 bit). With ever increasing computing power, our encryption keys don't look so insurmountable.

One wonders if 448 bit encryption will stand up over time. I already gave up on 128 bit, thinking that within 10 years or so, these distributed computing systems will be able to break the encryption key within a relatively reasonable amount of time.

[goforit]

20. Linux????..............Sorry Bill Gates. Oh well!!!

[Barkley]

21. Did they choose Linux over Microsoft OS?

If so did they say why?

[squidbro]

22. Windows only runs on Intel/AMD processors

Did you stop to think that the computer is being built by IBM?

Microsoft's OS won't run on IBM Power processors.

Besides, Microsoft has no native 64 bit OS. The machine is likely being built with IBM's 64 bit Power processors. Whether Power4 or the upcoming Power5 is unclear.

Hence, Linux or some form of open source Unix is the only choice.

[Endangered Specie]

24. When IBM gets to building computers for a military I get nervous.

If you know what I mean.