Slow day

@vzn Computers can be expensive. In small group, it may be few 10k only. But for those group with clusters of few hundreds computers, it can be of million dollars including the high speed connection. Not to mention the power consumption

And for scientific research, the computational power is not the most important thing. It is the physics behind it. If the problem slightly changes slightly with an effective model, the computational time can be reduce from hundreds year to a day.

Also, for most problem, there is a minimum problem size (or the requirements on the memory or computational power). As long as you have more than it, you are fine.

And it is usually expected that the physics should not be changed even with different problem size, otherwise, it usually mean something is wrong.

@ChrisWhite The key point is that it is a consensus protocol. A common consensus is the core value. In order to reach consensus, the rules must be fixed. So technically, you can add a rule to problem such as some special type of protein folding. However, you cannot change it from time to time because it will tear of the networks. It will allow someone to trick the network, involving billion of dollar.

Maybe somedays, some genius can think of a way to integrate both in a good way. But I don't think it is possible.

@vzn I did simulation in lattice. The largest I have tried is a 2D lattice 65536 x 65536, but there is no real need for that size. A smaller size gives similar results already.

what kind of calculation on the lattice?

re bitcoin, it seems there could be some ecurrency protocol that can calculate arbitrary problems as part of its "proof of work" certificates... something to muse on...

a challenge for "nakamoto2.0"

did anyone notice bitcoin version is not even 1.0 yet? eeks

maybe the most money ever riding on a beta system... except maybe for google? dunno!

hwlau saw you are doing calculations with ising models.

a question for you: what is the physics principle that keeps them magnetized for a long time as they cool? is that analyzed in papers?

that seems to have a connection to P/NP transition point... recently was poking around looking at that a bit...

it does appear HPC languages/tech is diverging from more mainstream languages... eg client/server, web apps etc

one language cannot do it all.

some cannot even do what they set out to do.

java seems to be fading on the front end eg with swing almost a legacy app now.

on the other hand, it shouldnt take it personally as other similar apps targeting that fade out also, eg most notoriously, flash.

one of my 1st instincts in 1995 on 1st hearing about java from a sun dev on the prj was "why reinvent the wheel with the gui"?