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Comment by Shish2k | Hacker News Reader

> more than 235 equipment cabinets (racks) in total

I wonder what they're doing that needs that much processing power? Or is it that every part of every subsystem has a dedicated server assigned to it no matter how little power it needs, just to stop the possibility of interference?

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They are trying to find, track, and compute a shot at lots of things that can be very stealthy or go very, very fast. They would also like some redundancy since a server fail gets very costly.

I wonder what they're doing that needs that much processing power?

Java EE?

Seeing as this is the military, I would guess that they have triple redundant systems for some things, but that still is a decent amount of computing power there.

Is the "James Kirk" part a joke, or is that the real name of Zumwalt's Captain? Sorry, if this looks blue-eyed, I can't tell that from sarcasm.

The "Regimental Commander" of the military academy boarding school I went to was a James Kirk my freshman year. And his school rank was captain.

EDIT: Actually, the Zumwalt looks promising this way. Just add two nacelles and a saucer section.

EDIT: The Zumwalt bridge looks promising in another way. (Leiji Matsumoto) But instead of the 3 smaller screens, have a single 30x30 foot screen leaning forward at a 45 degree angle.

It's "James A. Kirk" though, not "James Theodore Kirk."

Tiberius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk

Thanks! I could have sworn the last time I watched Star Wars, he said his middle name was Theodore.

I once interviewed a guy whose resume implied he played a large part in designing some of these redundant systems for carriers/whatever.

I asked him how he dealt with failover/etc, and said they used master election, and that it was guaranteed to work, and then proceeded to describe exactly a system guaranteed to fail. He had never heard of paxos, and when i described it to him, he was sure it wouldn't work.

It's probably a command & control vessel that does real-time stuff (flight/listening post telemetry, intelligence gathering).

It's a mission designed to run Crysis 1 at 60FPS. I hear rumors that if they reach 61, the full fury of an uncontrollable lens flare reaction takes place, so they can only do this mission in the Mariana Trench for safety reasons.

plus, being on a Navy ship gives them virtually unlimited water to use as a coolant for the overclocked systems.

I wonder if this has applications relevant to countries trying to ween from our technical infrastructure.

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