The IBM supercomputer we are talking about is called "Roadrunner"
en.wikipedia.org...
It has a peak operating performance of about 1.7 petaflops. IBM built it for the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security
Administration and it JUST became operational in May.
NASA has a supercomputing division called NAS (Nasa advanced supercomputing) division.
See links:
Nasa supercomputing home:
www.nas.nasa.gov...
Nasa supercomputers and specs:
www.nas.nasa.gov...
NASA has 3 supercomputing systems
-Columbia
-Schirra
-RT Jones
And then the storage computer they use which can hold 25 petabytes of information. Columbia is the most powerful NASA has (currently). It has a
theoretical peak processing power of 88.88 teraflops, compared to the new IBM roadrunner which is about twice this. NASA is currently planning a new
supercomputer to be built by Intel and SGI, which will be called the Pleiades, which would have a peak processing capability of about 1.0
petaflops.
Some supercomputers have actually been designed around cracking ciphers like "Deep Crack" (:lol
which was designed solely for the purpose of
cracking the DES cipher
See:
en.wikipedia.org...
If nothing else, it is proof of concept that supercomputers can be built without having to cost millions of dollars and can still be extremely
efficient at cracking.
from wikipedia
In 1998 the EFF built Deep Crack for less than $250,000.[1] In response to DES Challenge II-2, on July 17, 1998, Deep Crack decrypted a
DES-encrypted message after only 56 hours of work, winning $10,000. This was the final blow to DES, against which there were already some published
cryptanalytic attacks. The brute force attack showed that cracking DES was actually a very practical proposition. For well-endowed governments or
corporations, building a machine like Deep Crack would be no problem.
The technology is much better today due to Moore's Law. If you aren't sure what Moore's Law is.. This is basically what it means..
en.wikipedia.org...
Moore's law describes an important trend in the history of computer hardware: that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on
an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.[1] The observation was first made by Intel co-founder
Gordon E. Moore in a 1965 paper.[2][3][4] The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop for another decade at least
and perhaps much longer.[5]
Almost every measure of the capabilities of digital electronic devices is linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, even the
resolution of digital cameras. All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well.[6] This has dramatically increased the usefulness of
digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy.[7] Moore's law describes this driving force of technological and social change in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The technology is better for everyone, therefore the encryption obstacles thrown out by the creators of malicious software are also much more
advanced. But supercomputing power has also been increasing due to Moore's Law, therefore any supercomputing application should, in theory, still be
extremely effective at cracking/deciphering such insane encryption techniques..
-ChriS
[edit on 14-6-2008 by BlasteR]
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