[codezero]

Weird question maybe, but does anyone keep track of quantitative or qualitative data that measures the discrepancy between consumer (commercial) and government computer technology?

TBH, it's kind of amazing that a custom computer from 50 years ago has the specs of a common IC/SoC today, but those specs scale with time.

[ajsnigrutin]

There is no difference anymore, the only difference is the scale.

Back then, consumers got nothing, governments got largge computers (room sized+), then consumers got microcomputers (desktop sized), governments got larger mainframes, consumers got PCs, government got big-box supercomputers,...

And now? Consumers get x86_64 servers, governments get x86_64 servers, and the only difference is how much money you have, how many servers can you buy and how much space, energy and cooling you need to run them.

well, "normal users" get laptops and smartphones, but geek-consumers buy servers... and yeah, I know arm is an alternative.

[tavavex]

I'd argue that the difference is the price. There is still quite a bit of a difference between average consumer and business hardware, but compute power is cheap enough that the average person can afford what was previously only reserved for large companies. The average "consumer computer" nowadays is an ARM smartphone, and while server equipment is purchasable, you can't exactly hit up your local electronics store to buy a server rack or a server CPU. You can still get those things quite easily, but I wouldn't say their main goal is being sold to individuals.

[creer]

Let's not go too far either. Money and determination still buys results. A disposable government system might be stuffed with large FPGAs, ASICs and other exotics. Which would rarely be found in any consumer system - certainly not in quantity. A government system might pour a lot of money in the design of these and the cost of each unit. So, perhaps not much difference for each standard CPU and computer node but still as much difference as ever in the rest?

[codezero]

I was asking about anyone tracking the disparity between nation-state computing power and commercially available computing power. This seems like something that's uncontroversial.

[creer]

"Nation state" doesn't mean "country". It certainly doesn't mean "rich country".

[bregma]

By 'government' do you mean banks and large industrial concerns (like the "industry" in "military-industrial complex")? The latter are where all the big iron and massive compute power has always been.

If course, from a certain point of view, they're many of the same people and money.

[c0pium]

Why would you expect there to be one? It’s all the same stuff and has been for decades.

[codezero]

I expect nation state actors to have immensely more access to computing power than the commercial sector, is that controversial?

[ghaff]

Because the big ones spend more money. I expect Google etc. has access to more computing power than most nation states do.

[ianburrell]

If you look at the top supercomputers, US national labs occupy most of the top 10. But they aren’t enormously larger than the others. They are also built of out of standard parts. I’m surprised that they are recent, I expected the government to be slow and behind.

What do you expect US government to do with lots of computing power? I wouldn’t expect military to need supercomputers. Maybe the NSA would have a lot for cracking something or surveillance. But the big tech companies have more.

[xcv123]

> They are also built of out of standard parts. I’m surprised that they are recent, I expected the government to be slow and behind.

Because the government isn't building them. They are Cray supercomputers, supplied by HPE. Not entirely built with standard parts. Proprietary interconnect and cooling system.

[c0pium]

Infiniband is not a proprietary interconnect. Water is not a proprietary cooling system.

High scale is about using commodity components (hundreds of) thousands of times.

[xcv123]

HPE Slingshot is not Infiniband and it is proprietary to HPE.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.08886.pdf

The cooling system is also proprietary to HPE. Not saying that other vendors don't offer their own liquid cooling systems.