TITAN - Taking Over the World.

Apparently Elon Musk is scared that our ORNL TITAN supercomputer might take over the world. That might be fun, but as a variant - that us evil scientists use the supercomputer to seize control.

Now, TITAN is already a 20 petaflop machine, whereas the human brain is only 10 petaflops, so we already have the raw power needed to create superintelligence. A tad more programming could lead our little toy to controlled synthetic ultraconsciousness, with a brain the size of a planet, capable of talking the hind legs off an Arcturan megadonkey*. 

But just yapping and a monster brain are not enough - you need arms, legs, weapons etc. So we'd need to hook TITAN up to mindless robots that can see to our physical needs: huge, indestructible machines with infinite strength, precision and balance that never tire and prepare perfect sushi. 

Evilly-laughing, mwaha ha ha ha, we villainous plotters would then finally flip the switch that orders the supercomputer to make the robots kill all the little people and use the fruits of our dystopian Earth to serve us, only us, their masters, in any way we desire. Hmm.....in my case that would require forming two robot soccer teams, one, that I would play in, being slightly better than the other.

*Acknowledgement: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Who needs supercomputers? - Just use your cell phone.

OR



?.

As a specialist editor of Computer Physics Communications I regularly get issues in the mail, and was amused to read in the latest edition an article entitled "Mobile Phone as a Platform for Numerical Simulation" by Filip Sala of Warsaw University. Today's cellphones have about the CPU power of PCs of the late 1990s, and there are 5 billion of the pesky little things. Sala managed to use one to simulate light propagation in linear and nonlinear media based on the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation and molecular reorientation in nematic liquid crystals. So who needs supercomputers? - just get your daughters off the phone. Well, maybe supercomputers are easier after all......

UT Supercomputer Predicts Revolution

Well, I knew the UT supercomputers were good. After all, we have peered into the origin of life, probed biofuel barriers, helped design drugs  and done myriad other things with them. But I didn't know they were capable of predicting revolutions. Apparently so, according to this BBC report on data mining with the UT SGI Altix "Nautilus" machine. 

"S'ils n'ont pas d'ordinateur, qu'ils mangent de la brioche!":

Powerful Supercomputer Peers into the "Origin of Life"

ORNL has just released this press article on our research into a ribozyme, performed by Tomasz Berezniak together with Mai Zahran, Petra Imhof and Andres Jaeschke and myself. The UT Kraken supercomputer bore the brunt of the load for these calculations. The work was published in this article. Ribozymes (catalytic RNAs) were the center of a presumed RNA world at the early origins of life.

UT's Kraken world's most powerful academic computer

..and sixth overall, while ORNL's Jaguar retains its Number Two Spot.

Monstrous Kraken supercomputer up and running at ORNL

http://www.oakridger.com/localnews/x1959835750/Monstrous-Kraken-supercomputer-up-and-running-at-ORNL

..so powerful, it is rumoured to be capable of predicting the existence of Jack Daniels whisky and the Tennessee Walking Horse from the Big Bang in less than a millisecond! (with a nod to Douglas Adams)