Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 27. Oktober 2005 / Time Line October 27, 2005
Version 3.526. Oktober 2005, 28. Oktober 2005
10/27/2005
Journalisternes Fredsdag.
Kilde: Nyhedsbrev, Journalister for fred, 1986:7 s.
1.
10/27/2005
Nigerian cabinet approves Chemical Weapons bill
http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=386703
Lagos, Nigeria, 10/27 - Nigeria`s federal cabinet Wednesday
approved a bill on the International Chemical Weapons Convention,
which would now be forwarded to parliament for passage into law,
according to Information and National Orientation Minister Frank
Nweke Jr.
The passage of the bill will mean the ratification of the
Convention, which Nigeria signed in 1993.
Nweke said although Nigeria neither possessed nor produced chemical
weapons, it would enjoy assistance under the Convention in the
event of an attack with such weapons.
10/27/2005
The Independent
Inquiry Committee has today issued a Report on The Manipulation
of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme.
http://www.iic-offp.org/
10/27/2005
World's Fastest Supercomputer Combination Unveiled For National
Security at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Pair to be used to ensure U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile is safe
and reliable without testing
http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/newsreleases/2005/PR_2005-10-27_NA-05-25.htm
LIVERMORE, CA -- The National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA) today officially dedicated two new, next-generation
supercomputers that will help ensure the U.S. nuclear weapons
stockpile remains safe and reliable without nuclear testing. The
IBM machines will be housed at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL).
NNSA Administrator Linton F. Brooks said the dedication marks the
culmination of a ten-year campaign to use supercomputers to run
three-dimensional codes at lightning-fast speeds to achieve much of
the nuclear weapons analysis that was formerly accomplished by
underground nuclear testing.
At an event in the LLNL Terascale Simulation Facility (TSF), Brooks
also announced that the BlueGene/L supercomputer performed a record
280.6 trillion operations per second on the industry standard
LINPACK benchmark. The supercomputing community uses the LINPACK
benchmark application as the measure of performance to determine
rankings on the Top 500 computer list. (For more information on the
Top 500 list, see http://www.top500.org/)
Purple, the other half of the most powerful supercomputing twosome
on Earth, is a machine capable of 100 teraflops as it conducts
simulations of a complete nuclear weapons performance. The IBM
Power5 system is undergoing final acceptance tests at the TSF.
"The unprecedented computing power of these two supercomputers is
more critical than ever to meet the time-urgent issues related to
maintaining our nation's aging nuclear stockpile without testing,"
Brooks said. "Purple represents the culmination of a successful
decade-long effort to create a powerful new class of
supercomputers. BlueGene/L points the way to the future and the
computing power we will need to improve our ability to predict the
behavior of the stockpile as it continues to age. These
extraordinary efforts were made possible by a partnership with
American industry that has reestablished American computing
preeminence."
In a recent demonstration of its work capability, BlueGene/L ran a
record-setting materials science application at 101.5 teraflops
sustained over seven hours on the machine's 131,072 processors,
running an application of importance to NNSA's effort to ensure the
safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent. A
teraflop is 1 trillion computer operations per second.
Both machines were developed through NNSA's Advanced Simulation and
Computing (ASC) program and join a series of other supercomputers
at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories dedicated to NNSA's
Stockpile Stewardship effort to maintain the nation's nuclear
deterrent through science-based computation, theory and
experiment.
Together, the Purple and BlueGene/L systems will put an astounding
half of a petaflop, or half of a quadrillion
(1,000,000,000,000,000) operations per second, peak performance at
the disposal of scientists and engineers working at Sandia, Los
Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. This is more
supercomputing power than at any other scientific computing
facilities in the world.
"Today marks another important milestone in the DOE Office of
Science and NNSA partnership to revitalize the U.S effort in
high-end computing," said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, director of the
Department of Energy's Office of Science. "NNSA and the Office of
Science have leveraged resources in the areas of operating systems,
systems software and on advanced computer evaluations to the
benefit of both organizations. The ASC Purple and BlueGene/L
machines at Livermore are the latest in an increasingly
sophisticated suite of supercomputers across the DOE complex.
Together the NNSA and Office of Science high performance computing
programs serve to advance U.S. energy, economic and national
security by accelerating the development of new energy
technologies, aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge,
and simulating and predicting the behavior of nuclear weapons."
"The partnership between the National Nuclear Security
Administration, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and IBM
demonstrates the type of innovation that is possible when advanced
science and computing power are applied to some of the most
difficult challenges facing society," said Nick Donofrio, IBM
executive vice president for innovation and technology. "Blue
Gene/L and ASC Purple are prime examples of collaborative
innovation at its best -- together, we are pushing the boundaries
of insight and invention to advance national security interests in
ways never before possible."
"The early success of the recent code runs on BlueGene/L represents
important scientific achievements and a big step toward achieving
the capabilities we need to succeed in our stockpile stewardship
mission," said Michael Anastasio, LLNL's director. "BlueGene/L
allows us to address computationally taxing stockpile science
issues. And these code runs provide a glimpse at the exciting and
important stockpile science data to come."
The 101 teraflop record-setting materials science calculations
referred to above, involved the simulation of the cooling process
in a molten uranium actinide system, a material and process of
importance to stockpile stewardship. This was the largest
simulation of its kind ever attempted and demonstrates that
BlueGene/L's architecture can operate with real-world applications.
The record breaking 101 teraflop number is also significant because
it was sustained over a long period of time and involved a
scientific code that will be one of the workhorse codes running on
the machine.
BlueGene/L will move into classified production in February 2006,
to address critical problems of materials aging. The machine is
primarily intended for stockpile science molecular dynamics and
turbulence calculations. High peak speed, superb scalability for
molecular dynamics codes, low cost and low power consumption make
this an ideal solution for this area of science.
Purple consists of 94 teraflop classified and 6 teraflop
unclassified environments together totaling 100 teraflops. It
represents the culmination of 10 years work by the ASC program to
develop a computer that could effectively run newly developed 3D
weapons codes needed to simulate complete nuclear weapons
performance. The machine's design or "architecture" with large
memory powerful processors and massive network bandwidth is ideal
for this purpose. The insights and data gained from materials aging
calculations to be run on BlueGene/L will be vital for the creation
of improved models to be used for future full weapons performance
simulations on Purple.
The systems are part of an approximately $200 million contract with
IBM and were delivered on schedule and within budget. The machines
were designed to meet requirements in weapons simulations and
materials science. The approach of dividing requirements across two
machines, rather than building a single machine to meet all
requirements, turned out to be the efficient and cost effective way
to meet program objectives.
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