The U.S. government has hired Cray, a company that specializes in building super computers, to build one for it that will help manage the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
The $174 million government contract, which amounts to one of the largest that the company has ever been awarded, will be used to build a Cray XC super computer, along with a Cray Sonexion storage system for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA named the entire system “Trinity.” Trinity will be used to keep America’s nuclear arsenal safe, secure, and effective.
Trinity will be a joint effort between elements of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Sandia National Laboratory as part of the NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and Computing Program.
“We look forward to working with Cray to create a significant increase in supercomputing capability for key NNSA national security applications,” Bruce Hendrickson, Sr. Manager of the Extreme-scale Computing group at Sandia National Laboratories said. “Trinity will target the largest and most demanding simulations for NNSA.”
Trinity will consist of a next-gen version of the company’s Cray XC system, which will be powered by future Intel Xeon Haswell-based processors, along with future Intel Xeon Phi CPUs code named “Knight’s Landing.” Trinity will be capable of multi-petaflop level performance, 82 petabytes of storage capacity, and 1.7 terabytes per second of “sustained performance.” Trinity will be based at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
It’s unclear whether Trinity will be used to run the nation’s nuclear arsenal in the event that the weapons should ever need to be deployed in combat situations. It’s also unclear when the NNSA expects Trinity to be up and running.
We have reached out to Cray, and will update this article accordingly if and when we receive any relevant and new information.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.