No nukes is good news for supercomputers [nuclear weapons simulation

Abstract

By the year 2010, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative will develop high performance, full-system high-fidelity predictive codes to support weapons design, production analysis, accident analysis, and certification. It will stimulate the US computer manufacturing industry to create the more powerful high-end supercomputing capability required by these applications and create a computational infrastructure and operating environment that makes these capabilities accessible and usable. The program has four main objectives: Performance-create predictive simulations of nuclear weapon systems to analyse behaviour and assess performance in an environment without nuclear testing; safety - predict with high certainty the behaviour of full weapons systems in complex accident scenarios; reliability - achieve sufficient, validated predictive capabilities to extend the lifetime of the stockpile, predict failure mechanisms, and reduce routine maintenance. renewal - use virtual prototyping to reduce production and testing facilities for stockpile requalification and replacement work.