A lot of problems cannot easily be distributed across a cluster because all nodes require access to a huge data set. Copying the data set to every node requires massive amounts of memory in each node, and transferring it one piece at a time makes the performance drop to less than 1/1000th (WANs and even LANs are no match for a direct memory interface).

So maybe the Iranian scientists building a weather forecast system (which falls into the category described above) aren't quite as stupid as Mr. Mohammed Raei seems to think...

Well, I suppose if the government is so worried about it, they could always send them copies of Vista... that would fix the super computer (or at least disable funtionality due to a WGA failure).

The USA started on our road to the hydrogen bomb with the ENIAC ... most cell phones, and even some wrist watches, are more powerful than that... 

How about instead of starting wars all over the world and then yelling at anyone that emulates them, the USA could shut down its own nuclear weapons programs as an example to the world.

Probably they just go to Turkey buy the stuff and go back. There's no real customs check there. Many people even smuggle huge tanks of gas, what's 200 something processors.

It's funny that this is big news but this article "Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran" never saw the light of day. Gee, wonder why? http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm#2

Back in Iran, I had the most incredible PC available to date. that was like 10+ something years ago, when everyone had 2mb of ram and floppies, I had a system with 1GB HD, 16MB RAM, CD-ROM and a VGA. It cost me 12 grand but it let me play Duke Nukem 3D and doom.

As mentioned, don't worry about Iran. After all they want nukes for energy remember ? forget about the oil they have. and the super PC will be used to help al gore and the polar bears. and maybe even hiLIARy will save the day.......this is all true because the media told me so !

"...may be it "could" do it if the CIA found Iranian involvement in some dark and evil "super-penis extension project", but what honest man could blame him for that?"

That reminds me. Do you know what happens when Bush takes Viagra? He grows taller. Ba-dump-dump..

Anyway, with millions of high-end CPUs available daily all over the planet, how could they ever even dream of stopping this sort of thing?

why is everybody anti Iran. they have a wakko president but as they say they want to build it for power… the whole country currently runs on oil, oil will run out in 50 years and then what? They have nothing else and the west is taking all their resources…. Ones the oil runs out the west will not give a dam about anything in the middle east so dam right they want to use the cleanest cheapest energy source

take plane to another country, walk into a shop, buy all opterons they have in stock, go to next shop, rinse repeat till you got enough... then take plane back. its that easy. 
no reason to blame amd for anything in regards to that.

mmm maybe a PS3 could done
the job it has 0.5 Teraflops of 
power but only 256mb of ram :(.

May bee they need a lot of
ram to do whether simulations.


May be it as Oliver North who sold the ships to Iran.
People are so stupid. Haven't we learned from Iraq? Or haven't we learned that propaganda such as this is making this world much worse.

It sounds to me some idiots in US think no one can find any AMD/Intel CPUs in Iran. I think US government should be really happy that their CPUs are still better than competitors otherwise Iran would have made a supercomputer from Chinese CPUs and then not only US couldn't stop Iran, but wouldn't even earn some cash out of it.

It appears that it is the US that desperately needs Iran's oil and power in middle-east. US government better stop acting as if they still control everything in the world.

a PS3 cluster (such as TerraSoft's) is a better choice.... a 32-node PS3 cluster can reach 4 teraflops. 

And the Persians can kill time playing Assasins Creed while they're not designing nukes.

Why woudl the company be "extremely emabarassed" if they didn't ship the parts?

If this beast is the most powerfull state-owned computer array in Iran, no need to be stupid. Of course it will be used for something else than weather forecast.
Otherwise, Iran would use their nuclear powerplant program only for civilian needs, isn't it ?

"Fortunately the supercomputer will be used for weather forecasting and not an atom bomb."

Bwahahaha!

"It is going to be VERY hot in Tel Aviv on Monday morning followed by several days of black rain."

Where is the problem just buy these chips in somewhere Europe, put them in a car's trunk and drive to Iran. 

No big problem.

cheers

A

How they think they can control chips not to be sold to somebody. They can be bought by ex-Iranians in any other country and brought to their country in the box of candies when they visit their families. They do not need to bring all of them at once. Just maybe 1 or 2 per person. It is easy and one day job. How AMD can be found guilty for this. WHat about USA weapons in Iran ? Come on, common sense says you can import/export anything - anywhere these days.Period. You want them not to send you atomic missiles.Be friend with them,not enemy. ANd let's all start to invest in space technology instead.

believe me, I went to Iran, and even with this technology ban they have every thing and more too, I saw Xeons, Core 2's, Opteron's, Athlon's, and even the new Phenom is there !!

ofcourse not throught offical commercial ways...

and I know why they don't make it Intels based as Intel has very good relations with Israel and they do support Israel, Iran has made some laws to not support Israel in any way even when they buy a product from such companeis that support Israel...

but ofcourse theres ( exceptions ) for this law, you may have these products if theres no other products that can be compared to it, or the price it soo much...

Don't worry...

...I trust that President Bush isn't going to nuke Iran out of existence for
superbombs, supercannons or supercomputers...he's far too enlightened for that.

...may be it "could" do it if the CIA found Iranian involvement in some dark and evil "super-penis extension project", but what honest man could blame him for that?

By the way, in that case, he'd not be doing that for "oil" or to make a "gift" to his big friends in the armament industry by emptying the US arsenal, right? So he'd doing that for a just and fair reason!


If someone wanted to build a super computer, they can do it with fast chips like the Opteron, but they can also do it with thousands of slower chips using a distributed computing model like folding@home. Or even with some consoles or graphics cards. A few years ago, the Apple G5 was billed as a super computer for personal use. Now the cheapest Athlon X2 gives it a run for it's money.

I understand that the Amercian Government wants to apply some pressure on Iran, but in this case this legislation is somewhat useless.