🖥️ World’s fastest computer goes online, first data center on Moon, electric spy sea drone

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The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California has launched the world’s fastest supercomputer, “El Capitan.” This marks a new milestone in high-performance computing.

This $600 million machine was built to handle sensitive and classified tasks, particularly in national security.

It is set to play a crucial role in securing the U.S. nuclear stockpile, especially since underground testing was banned in 1992. Let's take a closer look at this Must Read. 

🔥Today’s job of the day as featured on jobs.interestingengineering.com:

> DevOps Engineer
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🖥️ US: World’s fastest supercomputer with 11 million cores powers up

El Capitan was officially dedicated on January 9, 2025, following its online debut in November 2024. Its primary focus is national security, including material discovery, high-energy-density physics, nuclear data, and weapon design.

These tasks require immense computational power, and El Capitan is designed to provide that capacity easily. El Capitan's development was overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy's CORAL-2 initiative. It succeeds the Sierra supercomputer, which entered service in 2018.

Despite Sierra still being in use, El Capitan is expected to surpass its predecessor by far, delivering performance 18 times faster.

🌚 US firm to launch first solar-powered Moon data center in February

It looks like Earth’s natural satellite will be buzzing with a lot of commercial activities in the coming years.

Interestingly, the Moon may soon become home to a cutting-edge data center – thanks to a Florida-based startup Lonestar Data Holdings.

Reuters reported that the Lonestar is planning to place the first physical data center. They will utilize SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch the fully assembled data center, most likely next month (February).

🌊 AUKUS tests 4,850-pound electric spy drone that swims 19,685 ft deep

The AUKUS navy teams trialed an underwater autonomous drone recently to estimate its capabilities in the deep sea.

The tests were carried out as part of an exercise off Virginia Beach, near the world’s largest naval base in Norfolk in the United States. These were carried out as part of the AUKUS defense partnership.

The tests saw personnel from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US come together under AUKUS Pillar 2.

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