The world's fastest supercomputer is born, with amazing computing power
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States announced last week that its latest supercomputer, El Capitan, can perform 2.79 gigaflops per second, making it the fastest computer in the world. This major breakthrough was developed in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and the U.S. Department of Energy, and was presented at the annual Supercomputer Conference (SC Conference) in Atlanta, Georgia. Officially announced, it also topped the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers.
Image source: top500 El Capitan tops the list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers
In order to make it easier for ordinary people to understand the concept of this number, laboratory spokesman Jeremy Thomas said: "To achieve the computing power of El Capitan in one second, more than 1 million of the latest iPhones will be required to operate at the same time. The height of these mobile phones stacked will be more than 8 kilometers. "If humans perform the same calculation, it would take 8 billion people around the world to calculate simultaneously for up to 8 years. Compared with ordinary home computers, El Capitan's computing speed is approximately 5.4 million times faster. This amazing performance allows it to perform a variety of complex tasks, including simulation experiments, artificial intelligence development, and various cutting-edge research.
Image source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supercomputer El Capitan
Blockchain security has attracted attention, experts: there is no need to worry in the short term
With the advent of El Capitan, the cryptocurrency industry has resurfaced long-standing concerns that supercomputers could crack blockchains and bring down networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, blockchain encryption experts believe that such concerns are unfounded. Yannik Schrade, CEO and co-founder of Arcium, a Swiss blockchain company, explained that even for a supercomputer like El Capitan, it would still take 10 billion years to crack a 256-bit private key. The elliptic curve cryptography algorithm (ECC) used by the blockchain has special computational asymmetry.
Schrade further explained that supercomputers still use traditional binary operations to process data, and their powerful performance mainly comes from parallel operations - the ability to handle multiple tasks at the same time. Although this computing model is powerful, it is still difficult to break through the defense lines of modern encryption systems. In contrast, quantum computers use quantum bits (qubits) to perform operations and can take advantage of quantum mechanical principles such as superposition and quantum entanglement, which represents a completely different dimension of computing.
Quantum computing is the real threat, experts call for early response
Duncan Jones, director of cybersecurity at Quantinuum, a British quantum computing developer, pointed out that the real threat comes from quantum computing.
"Modern encryption systems cannot be broken by any traditional system, including supercomputers. However, the threat posed by quantum computers is much more serious!"
He predicts that within the next ten years, there may be quantum computers capable of breaking today's blockchain algorithms.
San Jose State University engineering professor Ahmed Banafa also warned that the blockchain industry often over-trusts its security and ignores potential vulnerabilities.
“Many proponents equate the immutability of blockchain with invulnerability, but this view ignores the risks posed by advanced technologies such as quantum computing, as well as practical issues such as software vulnerabilities.”
He emphasized that although the blockchain industry has realized the potential risks of quantum computing, there are still few platforms that adopt quantum defense measures (such as quantum key distribution), which makes them vulnerable to future threats.
The real purpose of El Capitan: Nuclear weapons simulation and artificial intelligence research
Despite concerns from the blockchain and cybersecurity industries, the lab emphasized that El Capitan will not be used to crack blockchain encryption systems. Instead, its main uses will focus on nuclear explosion simulation and artificial intelligence research, including materials exploration, design optimization, advanced manufacturing, and training of intelligent artificial intelligence assistants based on confidential data.
Thomas said that while there is no longer a physical nuclear explosion test in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as depicted in the Oscar-winning film (Oppenheimer), virtual testing still has its limitations.
Source: J. Robert Oppenheimer, The New York Times
"Simulations are never completely accurate, but we use increasingly powerful computing power to run thousands of simulations to reduce the uncertainty in our models. We also put a lot of effort into verifying the accuracy of our code and have 1992 A large amount of underground test data before the end of the nuclear test in 2017 gives us confidence in the reliability of the code."
So for those who are worried that "once supercomputers come out, the blockchain industry will be subverted and all cryptocurrencies will cease to exist", you can rest assured that basically the industry will not perish unless the encryption spirit dies. But "will the currency price return to zero" are two different things.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
"The supercomputer El Capitan is launched! Blockchain security may face challenges. Is Bitcoin in danger? 』This article was first published in "CryptoCity"
