Why Every Day Is Earth Day When GPUs Drive Climate Modeling

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Our GPU technology is well known for making the land, sea and life of movies like in The Hobbit and Life of Pi eye-poppingly realistic. What you may not realize is it’s also being used by some of the world’s most powerful computers to model the very real Earth. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using GPU-powered high performance computing to develop most complex system models for climate change research using scientific and energy applications. The lab — operated by the U.S. Department of Energy — is working with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and several universities on a decade-long project known as Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME), which launched in mid-2014.
 
Seriously, what is with all of the PR feely-good bullshit being posted on here as of late?
Is there nothing else relevant or interesting in technology or computer related news?

Really, read that article.
Nothing was said; the whole thing was just a bunch of fluff, "We use low-power and are green-certified so give us more attention, awareness, and your money."

Everyone, go back to 2006 on here and look at all the cool technology news stories.
I don't see one thing on there about PR statements that say and mean nothing, or articles on how mega-corps are our friends and are environmentally-conscious...
 
Red Falcon said:
Seriously, what is with all of the PR feely-good bullshit being posted on here as of late?
Is there nothing else relevant or interesting in technology or computer related news?
Click to expand...

+1

Every time I see and read a PR statement on here I feel like I am reading one big advertisement.
 
Red Falcon said:
Seriously, what is with all of the PR feely-good bullshit being posted on here as of late?
Is there nothing else relevant or interesting in technology or computer related news?
Click to expand...
Wow who pissed in your corn flakes. I mean at least this is an article that is directly related to technology, they're using GPUs to crunch through climate data, kind of neat IMO.
 
At some point in the distant future, when we've been carefully monitoring climate for ~10,000 years or so, we might actually amass enough data to make sweeping predictions about climate that prove accurate (to construct computer models based on observed facts as opposed to pure speculation as is the case now.) It's obvious that current theories about climate change are incorrect in basically all respects, since all of the models for the last 20 years have been wrong. The fact is that we have nowhere near enough data to make climate predictions--but at least we now know it--that's something in itself, I suppose. It's amusing to see how some people have made a religion out of "The sky is falling!" Doom & gloom seems very attractive to some people, and that's sad considering that the global warming ministers are in it for the green (and I don't mean power-efficiency "green," either.) The only "climate change" they are remotely interested in is watching their bank accounts "change" as they grow, the result of the unscientific FUD they spew: to frighten the naive among us into opening the taxpayer's wallets....;) (Like the $500,000,000 Solyndra scam. Imagine that--half a billion dollars of Federal funds down the rabbit hole, and, gee, nobody knows where it went.)
 
Why all the hate ... essentially this is just marketing for some of the supercomputer capabilities of GPUs ... with the death of the old style supercomputers (like Crays) and the replacement with the big parallel systems using Intel processors or GPUs for massive parallel processing the companies are in competition for the supercomputer market ... climate change modeling is just as valid a use of a supercomputer as developing new missile technology or modeling more efficient cars and airplanes ... is there a list of acceptable supercomputer tasks somewhere :confused:
 
sfsuphysics said:
Wow who pissed in your corn flakes. I mean at least this is an article that is directly related to technology, they're using GPUs to crunch through climate data, kind of neat IMO.
Click to expand...

We should see more awesome threads like these:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859610
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859323


Not this blatant PR bullshit:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859808
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859579
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859704
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859703
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859577
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859474


I'm not trying to rag on Kyle and crew, I think they are great, but it just feels more and more like [H] has sold out to these corporations.
I know [H] is better than this, but why are so many of these worthless articles being posted, half of which no one even posted in. :(

"AMD wins environmental award"
Translation: AMD sucked enough corporate/government d!ck and put a positive spin on getting tax write-offs. :/

Seriously, who the fuck cares about this garbage??? :confused:
 
^ Maybe I was a bit unfair with the last one on that list: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859474
$25K is a lot of money, but for what those grad students are accomplishing and creating, NVIDIA will make millions off of their work.

It just feels so shallow and insincere.
Kind of like a polite robot, it's friendly, but without any real sincerity.
 
Red Falcon said:
^ Maybe I was a bit unfair with the last one on that list: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1859474
$25K is a lot of money, but for what those grad students are accomplishing and creating, NVIDIA will make millions off of their work.

It just feels so shallow and insincere.
Kind of like a polite robot, it's friendly, but without any real sincerity.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's just that there's not enough news around of the sort that there used to be. The number of PC hardware companies is a lot smaller. There used to be like a quintillion companies that made video processors like Tseng Labs, 3Dfx, Trident, Cirrus, Hercules (and a bunch of other random companies that I'm probably liable incorrectly identify) and there were lots of different hard drive manufacturers too. Plus people benchmarked stuff that no one cares about like CD-ROM drive data copy speeds to see if that quad speed drive on a motherboard's IDE controller really was faster than the double speed one connected to the system through a freakishly huge ISA sound card. And then there were like chipsets that mattered and whether or not someone was nice enough to add a pipeline burst cache module.

With tighter integration and fewer vendors there's a lot less variance between computing platforms and far fewer new product announcements to get excited about since everything is on a predictable yawn-fest release cadence that's as predictable as when you're gonna need to put pads on your grocery shopping list for a pending Aunt Flo visit.

The PC industry isn't dead, but [H] would have to branch out from what appeals to its core audience by exploring the growth markets of the larger computing industry in order to have more stuff to put up as news. That risks alienation of the existing readers and to what end? Just so we can connect a piece of hardware or software to politics or some social justice agenda and type angrily in all caps at each other about it? Whatever, we can do that now with an AMD PR announcement just as easily.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Maybe it's just that there's not enough news around of the sort that there used to be. The number of PC hardware companies is a lot smaller. There used to be like a quintillion companies that made video processors like Tseng Labs, 3Dfx, Trident, Cirrus, Hercules (and a bunch of other random companies that I'm probably liable incorrectly identify) and there were lots of different hard drive manufacturers too.
Click to expand...

HIf7u.jpg



Plus people benchmarked stuff that no one cares about like CD-ROM drive data copy speeds to see if that quad speed drive on a motherboard's IDE controller really was faster than the double speed one connected to the system through a freakishly huge ISA sound card. And then there were like chipsets that mattered and whether or not someone was nice enough to add a pipeline burst cache module.
Click to expand...

Like this!

266_002.jpg
 
If they're using 290x's....by the time they're done crunching the climate change models, they'll have brought it into full swing. :D
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
That's perfect! We need more huge PCBs with afterthought rewiring where like there's this one random wire that routes around a trace that was put in the wrong spot and hard drives with a bad sector map on a giant sticker on top to make the industry fun. :D
Click to expand...

You asked, I delivered. :D

Apricorn-MacArray-inline1.jpg
 
WaltC said:
It's obvious that current theories about climate change are incorrect in basically all respects, since all of the models for the last 20 years have been wrong.
Click to expand...
This is false.
 
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