ASCI Purple will be used to simulate nuclear explosions in 3-D
Scientists will soon be able to observe the first instants after a nuclear warhead detonates. Fortunately， it will be a three-dimensional simulation， made possible by the world's fastest computer. IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy announced the sale of a $290 million supercomputer， capable of performing 100 trillion calculations per second. Armed with that much computing firepower， a 3-D simulation of the first one-millionth of a second in a nuclear explosion will take eight weeks to calculate.
ASCI PURPLE， as the massive computer will be called， has a sobering task. Working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories， the hefty computer will be dedicated to the task of monitoring the nation's nuclear missile stockpile.
Every year， the Department of Energy has to certify to the U.S. president that the missiles are safe and in working order. Computers are constantly running simulations to predict the likelihood of missile failure in a war， or the consequences of a missile mishap while still in peacetime.
Currently， the former world's No. 1 computer， ASCI White， did the job. But it can only run simulations on simple theoretical models， said lab spokesman David Schwoegler. ASCI Purple will do the first true-to-life， three-dimensional simulation of a detonation.
And testing the nuclear arsenal requires much more than simulating the behavior of the plutonium inside a bomb. In fact， everything inside the bomb must be tested because materials tend to act in unpredictable ways during a detonation. One thing the computer will be able to test， for example， is whether aging materials hold potential hazards.
In the process， the computer will also help scientists unmask some of the 20th century's great mysteries. Nuclear weapons， Schwoegler said， were built in the past "pragmatically， not scientifically." In other words - the bombs worked， but the scientists building them were basing their construction on theories， instead of observation.