Simundo – BIG SCIENCE • BIG SOLUTIONS

Planet Earth: Home

We stand suddenly as guardians of our planet’s future

Climate change has shaped life’s evolutionary opportunity and demise since the dawn of time. Planet earth is capable of dramatic, even cataclysmic ecological upheaval and is at once beautifully beneficent and arbitrarily harsh. So, today is by no means the first time we face environmental perils, but by radically transforming ecosystems, humans now hugely compound the risks of slipping or tipping away from nature’s grace and favour. Today is also the first time in history that we can sufficiently comprehend the biosphere’s deep and wonderful complexities in order to proactively and responsibly protect it. We must and we can.

Driven hard and fast by our intellect and incessant ingenuity, it is technology that powers global transformation yielding both fabulous benefits and dismal consequences. Our strategies must evolve even faster to meet the challenges of the industrial age’s radical impact and legacy. And so must science and technology. Simundo’s purpose is to accelerate the technology behind climate science and ensure the very best resources are used to the very best end: sustainable prosperity and security.

Climate science models

Predictive, proactive, thriving

Climate forecasts (e.g. IPCC reports) rely fundamentally on climate science’s predictive computer models. The sheer gravity of social and economic implications is clear: climate computing must provide accurate data. But it doesn’t. Colossal technical hurdles meet with a profound lack of political focus and vision. The scale of necessary computer power is mind-boggling, yet funding for climate science is relatively insignificant.

Climate models imagine future scenarios—literally creating image sequences—but currently the very best supercomputers barely cope at resolutions of old iPod displays. Model images contain far too few “pixels” to resolve critical climate detail such as clouds and ocean currents. Climate models, therefore, remain rudimentary, unreliable mimics of a complex real world. By analogy: we’re playing Pac-Man, when we really need the sophistication of The Sims. But this is no game. The four decades that it took to get us here all the way from Pong, is far too long a wait for a similar, necessary improvement in climate modelling.

Simundo can be the game changer.

Simundo!

Big ideas, Supermodels

Simundo aims to boost climate-modelling performance by a million-fold inside just five years and has developed a blueprint for an extraordinary supercomputer inspired by what it emulates: the globe. Some of this magic is prosaic ($billion budgets can only be money well spent). Far more significantly, “Supermodels” will leverage the very best ideas, creative talent, manufacturing—anything and everything to push the envelope with all the urgency and verve of the Manhattan Project or the Space Race. Success in this magnificent endeavour will be a monumental humanitarian achievement with sweeping global benefits.

Simundo is an exemplary not-for-profit social enterprise, a completely open and transparent international collaboration. We are embarking on Climate Big Science advocacy at the UN, to governments, the public, and philanthropists. Our message: climate issues transcend any political or national boundary and merit consideration above and beyond other Big Science projects such as CERN, ITER, ISS. And that practical solutions do exist! So, we’d love to show how the absolutely amazing is perfectly possible and quickly achievable when we all put our minds to it.

"We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it”

Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline (2009)

"We are atmospheric scientists.
Although we have been running models on supercomputers for decades,
we are well aware that, when it comes to computational science,
we are nothing more than experienced amateurs”

Prof. D. Randall, et al Progress Report (2009)

"The heavy lifting of climate simulation is not at all like running
legacy Windows code or 3D graphics.
It has more in common with DSP... By its very nature (literally),
low-level modelling is simple. If it isn't, we're doing something wrong.”

Simundo Supercomputer (2011)

"Fractured memory and bandwidth hierarchies, scheduling optimisation,
semantic disconnects, and so forth, pose severe and fundamental challenges
for supercomputing...Lucky for the human race,
these are not problems we have to solve; we just need to avoid them.”

Simundo Supercomputer (2011)

"We originally estimated 10 PFLOPS as the sustained computational rate
necessary to simulate Earth’s climate 1,000 times faster than it actually occurs.
An updated estimate of the requirements for the CSU model
raised that to as high as 70 PFLOPS -
an example of the considerable uncertainty in making these estimates.”

Green Flash Team, IEEE Computer (2009)

"Our current technologies can get us to the 10-20 PFLOPS range.
But then to start to think about 100 [PFLOPS],
we really need a major shift in technology.”

Peter Ungaro, Cray CEO Verbal remarks (2009)

"There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism.”

James Lovelock, The Guardian (2008)

MISSION

To answer critical climate questions by rapidly accelerating scientific and technological progress, Simundo’s mission is to facilitate supermodelling with purpose-built supercomputers on a vast, effective, and compelling scale. On a par with a mission to Mars, our goals are wildly ambitious yet practicable and down to earth. We will boost global collaboration, establish hubs of unprecedented resources, recruit the brightest talent, inspire and engage the broadest international community. Meeting the greatest of all challenges, the ideal is simple: secure and enhance life’s tenure on this wondrous planet.

VISION

Within years rather than decades we will establish high-detail, predictive climate supermodels as a concrete basis for rational and informed global environmental strategies. To achieve this, we will quickly enable supercomputers with million-fold and better performance improvement. We envision climate modelling assuming its rightful place alongside other Big Science projects, as an exemplary international collaboration.

SOCIAL CHARTER

We will drive progress that benefits all mankind, global ecosystems, and which brings peace and prosperity. Sustaining a nonpartisan and non-commercial stance, this process shall be open, transparent, cooperative, and maximally inclusive, rooted in the highest standards of accountability. Rewarding not only future generations, Simundo’s example in the here and now will incessantly stir enthusiasm, encourage creativity, inspire excellence, and engender collective responsibility

“We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself.

What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it”

Douglas Adams
speech at University of California (May 2001)