After having read an article in Nature (Vol. 467, 21 Oct 2010), I have a feeling that a battle between particle, astro and nuclear people is happening inside STFC for their limited budget allocated from the UK government. In the previous round (last year), the nuclear hit hardest for the budget cut under the Labour. Now, it is under the Conservative, who froze the coming four-year budget, that STFC has to decide which subgroup must suffer most.
The Japanese government is also facing the worst financial situation after the WWII. Slashing unnecessary things has started since last year. For scientists, the big cut on the development of supercomputers were shocking. One PM even said, "Why do we have to waste money on such a thing (supercomputer) only to become the world No.1? Maybe, No.2 might be enough." Many scientists were furious about this comment, by saying that "it is even difficult to become No.2 if the administrators' understanding about how science develops is as weak as the comment. Competition is so enormous world-wide that anyone without a big ambition and huge investment cannot achieve the top quality of research nowadays".
Actually, there is a report today that Chinese supercomputer, TIANHE (=天河,TENGA, Milky Way), becomes the world fastest machine for the first time, by beating the American JAGUAR supercomputer in the Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL). The Japanese fastest, TSUBAME in Tokyo Tech, is the fourth. And, No.2 was the former champion, JAGUAR. So, it has been proved that without the mind to stand up on the top it is very difficult to become "No.2"! (By the way, the CPUs and GPUs used in TENGA were made by Intels and AMD, respectively. Chinese original CPU is not yet world fastest, but some people say it is a matter of time.)
