China got #1 super computer :( does U.S. actually MAKE anything anymore?

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Dave

Dave

Staff member
The US makes a HUGE amount of stuff! Mostly they are students from other countries who study here and then take what they learn abroad.
 
Shakey

Shakey

The latest Top 500 list also reveals that the US is slipping down the rankings of supercomputer superpowers. Only five of the top ten machines are in the US, a change from other years in which American supercomputers have typically dominated the upper regions of the Top 500 list.

The US maintains its spot as the nation with the most supercomputers in the Top 500 list and China is now second. However, it has a long way to go to catch up as the US has 275 machines in the top 500 and China has only 42.
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We still have half of the top ten supercomputers, and have the most supercomputers in the top 500. I think we're doing fine when it comes to supercomputers.
 
C

Chibibar

Dave said:
The US makes a HUGE amount of stuff! Mostly they are students from other countries who study here and then take what they learn abroad.
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Computers - not much in the U.S. most components are made overseas
Cars - better one are overseas. Even assemble in Mexico then come to the U.S.
Appliances - Some local, but most parts are made in Asian country
Food - some are local (U.S.) but some are imported (cause I eat mostly Asian food so that doesn't count ;) )
Tech Support - We won't make so much joke if basic support are overseas
Office goods (paper clips, paper, staples and stuff) are made overseas (at least for my college most of them say "Made in China")

I know a lot of MMORPG games are made locally ;)

When I was in China, you can be sure the item I purchase (most items) are made, process, and assemble in China.
In the U.S. the item may be assemble in U.S. but the components are made elsewhere.

At least that is how I see it.
 
Shakey

Shakey

A lot of the R&D for those components is done in the US. I don't think the article mentions it, but the graphics cards powering the supercomputer are Nvidia's.

---------- Post added at 11:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 AM ----------

Here's a little more on it. It also uses Intel chips, and runs Linux. Both are also developed in the US.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Shakey said:
A lot of the R&D for those components is done in the US. I don't think the article mentions it, but the graphics cards powering the supercomputer are Nvidia's.

---------- Post added at 11:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 AM ----------

Here's a little more on it. It also uses Intel chips, and runs Linux. Both are also developed in the US.
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I was about to mention the same. Our R&D is being used elsewhere.

Too bad super computers are no longer an array of specialty chips, now they are just a bunch of Pentiums networked together.

I miss the old fashioned Crays
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar said:
BBC News - China's Tianhe-1A crowned supercomputer king

I know that the U.S. becomes more of a service industry but not even a good one (IMO) being outsource to many other countries.

I think that is one of the problem. We hardly make anything anymore. (IMO)
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The US still donkey punches the shit out of China when it comes to innovation. WE set the trends. WE innovate new ideas. China is great at taking something that works and mass producing, but there's no innovation. Everything China makes and does is copied from products made in U.S.A.
 
J

JCM

mr_thehun;452895][QUOTE=Chazwozel;452881][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
BBC News - China's Tianhe-1A crowned supercomputer king

I know that the U.S. becomes more of a service industry but not even a good one (IMO) being outsource to many other countries.

I think that is one of the problem. We hardly make anything anymore. (IMO)
Click to expand...

The US still donkey punches the shit out of China when it comes to innovation. WE set the trends. WE innovate new ideas. China is great at taking something that works and mass producing, but there's no innovation. Everything China makes and does is copied from products made in U.S.A.[/QUOTE]

When you get an attitude that things are and always be the way they are, things are bound to change. With the American government decreasing funding to basic research of all fields while China every year almost doubles its grants for basic research, I can only think that maybe in ten years we will be having a different discussion.[/QUOTE]
Not to mention that it was that thinking that made the Japanese get ahead in many technological fields, due to the fact that while the US was after innovation and the innovation after that, all the Japanese did were to perfect those innovations instead of jumping to the next new research/fad/trend, and it worked wonders for their car industry.

But other than that, I don't see the US ever becoming second to any country, while a country might get ahead in an area or two, USA will never loose in the areas of culture, University education, military and overall, influence as a global leader.
 
Shakey

Shakey

Linux was made by a finnish guy, my bad.

I wasn't trying to say no other country will ever beat us. I was just pointing out that while we may not be manufacturing as much as we did, it doesn't mean that we aren't making anything.
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

JCM said:
But other than that, I don't see the US ever becoming second to any country, while a country might get ahead in an area or two, USA will never lose in the areas of culture, University education, military and overall, influence as a global leader.
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Every other hegemony in the history of the world would like to say "hi"...

The US's major advantage was always that it used the Edison method of invention of getting other smart people to work for them... That might not work so well with actual competition (the USSR beat them to space while not being really an attractive place for scientists looking for work/someone to invest in their ideas), though i don't see them going down witohut a fight...

But a country as big as the US has enough natural avantages that the only way it can not always be at least in the top 5 is by screwing itself up... Palin 2012!!!
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Shakey said:
Linux was made by a finnish guy, my bad.

I wasn't trying to say no other country will ever beat us. I was just pointing out that while we may not be manufacturing as much as we did, it doesn't mean that we aren't making anything.
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Wasn't LInux a hack of Unix? Developed by Bell Labs? It is easy to innovate when you rip off corporate America.
 
Shakey

Shakey

It depends on what you call a hack I guess. It was made to be similar to it, but code wasn't taken from Unix to make it. SCO might disagree though.
 
strawman

strawman

sixpackshaker said:
Wasn't LInux a hack of Unix? Developed by Bell Labs? It is easy to innovate when you rip off corporate America.
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Linux was developed because Unix was too expensive for personal use, and Minix, while available inexpensively for students, wasn't considered by many to be as useful or powerful as Unix, and still wasn't free.

Linus Torvalds started developing Linux as a free alternative to Unix, compatible with Unix (by following the Posix standards, which declare what "unix compatible" means). It was developed on Minix machines, so to some degree it's a child of Unix and Minix.

Within two years over 12,000 people were using it (about 1993) and hacking on it. It wasn't too long before others developed the free Gnu tools that are often packaged with Linux (and now many other free unix systems) so that one could have a computer that does pretty much everything a unix system did with no proprietary software.

Given the Posix standards compatibility, it doesn't take a lot of effort to re-compile software for a unix system so it works on Linux, and given the expense of real unix licenses at the time, many people used Linux for research, which eventually led to the internet being powered by a significant number of linux machines.

BSD Unix stems directly from the original Unix software, though it took many years for the various proprietary pieces of code to be replaced with free code, and so it was several years after Linux was started that BSD was truly free (becoming FreeBSD and others). So Linux gained a significant advantage, though it's not as close to Unix as FreeBSD is.

So:

Bell Labs --> Unix
Linus Torvalds --> Linux (done on a Minix machine with the desire for Unix compatibility)
BSD variants --> University of California, Berkeley's split of the original Bell Labs Unix code (which they licensed early on)

 

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J

JCM

@Li3n;452961][QUOTE=JCM said:
But other than that, I don't see the US ever becoming second to any country, while a country might get ahead in an area or two, USA will never lose in the areas of culture, University education, military and overall, influence as a global leader.
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Every other hegemony in the history of the world would like to say "hi"...

The US's major advantage was always that it used the Edison method of invention of getting other smart people to work for them... That might not work so well with actual competition (the USSR beat them to space while not being really an attractive place for scientists looking for work/someone to invest in their ideas), though i don't see them going down witohut a fight...

But a country as big as the US has enough natural avantages that the only way it can not always be at least in the top 5 is by screwing itself up... Palin 2012!!![/QUOTE]Did I say never?

Forget the never.
 
C

Chibibar

The problem (at least in Texas so far) is that the government ARE slashing budget for EDUCATION.........

So the innovation area might start to drop since we have to lay off teachers left and right and close down department. (projected was 10% now our Chancellor is looking toward 24% budget cut)

This does not look good.

It is cool that we create new ideas and stuff, but it doesn't help the working class. We are at all time high in unemployment and the IT industry (tech support at least) are dwindling in our area. My friends with lots of experience are having hard time finding a job even a crappy tech job.
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar said:
The problem (at least in Texas so far) is that the government ARE slashing budget for EDUCATION.........

So the innovation area might start to drop since we have to lay off teachers left and right and close down department. (projected was 10% now our Chancellor is looking toward 24% budget cut)

This does not look good.

It is cool that we create new ideas and stuff, but it doesn't help the working class. We are at all time high in unemployment and the IT industry (tech support at least) are dwindling in our area. My friends with lots of experience are having hard time finding a job even a crappy tech job.
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The U.S. working class has been dwindling to nothing since the 1970's. To make it in the U.S. anymore you need to specialize in a niche market - preferably high tech.

The major problem with U.S. schools is that they're still back in 1950's mode of cranking out subordinate little drones, fit for factory work.
 
C

Chibibar

Chazwozel;453032][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
The problem (at least in Texas so far) is that the government ARE slashing budget for EDUCATION.........

So the innovation area might start to drop since we have to lay off teachers left and right and close down department. (projected was 10% now our Chancellor is looking toward 24% budget cut)

This does not look good.

It is cool that we create new ideas and stuff, but it doesn't help the working class. We are at all time high in unemployment and the IT industry (tech support at least) are dwindling in our area. My friends with lots of experience are having hard time finding a job even a crappy tech job.
Click to expand...
The U.S. working class has been dwindling to nothing since the 1970's. To make it in the U.S. anymore you need to specialize in a niche market - preferably high tech.

The major problem with U.S. schools is that they're still back in 1950's mode of cranking out subordinate little drones, fit for factory work.[/QUOTE]

I know that some of our faculty don't like change. We are trying to do more high tech stuff. We are improving our online hardware (my job) but with fund being reduce and enrollment are all time high, it is hard to keep quality service when your servers are being pound heavily and can't get new equipment to keep up with demand :( (sadly we already did 10% across the board cut already and lost tons of money for upgrades now we are bracing for another 15% cut - projected. We'll find out more when the Texas Legislature come back next year.)
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

JCM;452977][QUOTE=@Li3n said:
But a country as big as the US has enough natural advantages that the only way it can not always be at least in the top 5 is by screwing itself up... Palin 2012!!!
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Did I say never?

Forget the never.[/QUOTE]

Totally forgotten: BBC News - Sarah Palin says she could beat President Obama in 2012

You know, i'm kinda torn, i've always wanted to watch am empire fall in real time, and Palin would be even funnier to watch then Dubya... but a weak or China based world economy isn't a good place to start a career...
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
Until China raises its standard of living and gets better about its horrendous human rights violations they will always loose a good chunk of their best and brightest to us. We, on the other hand, will continue to send them liberal arts majors whose only real skill is that they speak English.

That's what I call a trade deficit.
 
Terrik

Terrik

whose only real skill is that they speak English.
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My only real skill is that I can speak English? :mad2:


Anyhow, the line of thinking that Chinese are still desperate to come to the good ol' land of Milk and Honey is quickly vanishing. I daresay cities like Beijing and Shanghai for example, have infrastructures that already exceed that of many major US cities and there has been real reform in the political aspect of things, albeit at a slower pace than I'd prefer. The new and current generation of Chinese are far less willing to pack up and live abroad then the previous generation because things have gotten just that much better. Even more so, the diaspora is loyal, strong, and vast, which has been no small benefit to the rise of China.
 
J

JCM

mr_thehun;453742][QUOTE=Terrik said:
whose only real skill is that they speak English.
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My only real skill is that I can speak English? :mad2:


Anyhow, the line of thinking that Chinese are still desperate to come to the good ol' land of Milk and Honey is quickly vanishing. I daresay cities like Beijing and Shanghai for example, have infrastructures that already exceed that of many major US cities and there has been real reform in the political aspect of things, albeit at a slower pace than I'd prefer. The new and current generation of Chinese are far less willing to pack up and live abroad then the previous generation because things have gotten just that much better. Even more so, the diaspora is loyal, strong, and vast, which has been no small benefit to the rise of China.
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Hammer, nail hitting it etc.

On English teachers. While many schools in China have terrible hiring practices there is still the fact that you have such a huge amount of the population of China willing to learn two or more languages, while many people in the united states get by with half of one.

English teachers have also been spreading VD and liberalization to the younger generation of China since they came... multiple times... en masse... since english teachers began penetrating the deeper reaches of the chinese countryside?[/QUOTE]*whistles innocently*
 
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