Posted on 10/18/2010 1:15:23 PM PDT by goldendays
China's Great Leap Forward in Computers
The Chinese dictator Chairman Mao Zedong launched China on a Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, aiming to surpass Britain in steel production within a few years. Instead, his back yard furnaces produced brittle, useless iron. Now China is taking a real huge stride forward, but in the high tech realm of fast computers. Bloomberg Businessweek reported on October 5th that when the list of the world's 500 fastest computers is published on November 15th, it will stun many. While the mainland now has the second-fastest computer, it may grab the lead. Jack Dongarra, director of the innovative computing laboratory at the University of Tennessee, has directed the semiannual Top 500 list since its inception in 1993. "There's a great belief that the Chinese will be number one," he says, although he had yet to see the hard evidence.
Apart from the prestige, having the fastest machine "means that China is taking computing seriously [and] taking steps to spur innovation. China gets it. These machines are useful for industry and it will help them maintain and continue on the current track of industrial growth," Dongarra says. Known as supercomputers, these gizmos are vital for research and simulation in climate modeling, genomics, alternative energy, seismic imaging, etc. -- and for advanced defense.
Given the nuclear testing ban, most nuclear powers now verify weapons virtually on supercomputers.. They also help to design better tanks, submarines, aircraft, and body armor.
Now, the U.S. has over 50 percent of the world's supercomputers, plus the fastest. Yet as supercomputers become cheaper, others will cut into those numbers. "Back in 2002, the Japanese became number one with the Earth Simulator, and it shook things up in the U.S.," says Dongarra.
Specifically, the fastest computer is the Jaguar that Seattle's CRAY builds. It's on paper maximum speed is 2.33 petaflops, over 2 quadrillion calculations per second. It operates at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In June, China's Nebulae, housed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, copped the second place with a recorded velocity of 1.271 petaflops. But its theoretical power reaches 2.984 petaflops. The builders are the Dawning Information Industry Co. but Intel components are inside.
China's climb in supercomputing power impresses many. At the turn of this century, it had zeo such machines. Within two years, it was investing. In June, China beat Japan in computing power and lags only leader America and the second-place European Union. China is positioned to surpass the EU. "The real question is when they overtake the U.S.," says Dongarra.
The prospect of Beijing getting to the top in this vital area is known to worry Western defense experts. They fear that it will permit the communist dictatorship to design and produce far better nuclear warheads and cyber espionage and warfare capabilities.
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SEE HERE : http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90881/7166779.html
China’s fastest supercomputer unveiled
It will not be long before China’s fastest super computer “Tianhe-1,” the name of which means Milky Way, is to be equipped with Chinese-made central processing unit chips, replacing the only part of the computer that is imported. At the same time, this signifies that China could rival the world’s most powerful computers. Theoretically, it is capable of more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second when operating at peak speed.
The high-performance computer has been praised as the “Mount Qomolangma” of computers, embodying science and technological competitiveness, and it is an important indicator of overall national strength. Currently, it has become the third key element in research in addition to theory and experimentation, and it is indispensable to economic and social development.
Tianhe-1 is China’s first domestically-made petaflop supercomputer, and it began the phase of debugging and testing in September, according to the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjing.
Earlier this year, the first device of Tianhe-1 was put into operation at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin.
The Tianhe-1 supercomputer system is now providing 24-hour remote network applications and running in good condition. After the petaflop computer system is completed, the calculation tasks will be transferred to it. Currently, the number of users of the National Supercomputing Center in Beijing and Tianjin is gradually increasing.
With high-performance CPU chips, the system’s overall processing power has increased substantially, and its information security is receiving more technological guarantees.
The Tianhe-1 was successfully developed by the Changsha-based National University of Defense Technology in 2009, and China thus became the world’s second country capable of developing petaflop supercomputers, only after the United States.
The Tianhe-1 was ranked fifth on the list of the Top 500 supercomputers issued in November 2009. One second of calculations conducted by Tianhe-1 is equivalent to 88 consecutive years of calculations by 1.3 billion people, and the data that the supercomputer can store is equivalent to the sum of the collections in four national libraries with 27 million books each.
“I was shocked at the milestone breakthrough, which was beyond expectation,” said Zhang Yunquan, a researcher with the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and an organizer of the China Top 100 list, which was released at a national conference on high-performance computers.
“I previously forecast China’s first petaflop computer no earlier than the end of 2010,” said Zhang.
“As far as I know, a combination of CPU and GPU is something new used to make a petaflop computer. A GPU, or graphic processing unit, plays a role as an accelerator to make the computer run faster, but reduces its power consumption and cost” said Li Nan, chief coordinator of the program.
The “Tianhe-1” will mainly be used for animation rendering, biomedical research, aerospace equipment development, processing of resource exploration and satellite remote-sensing data, data analysis for financial engineering, weather forecasts, new materials development and design and theoretical calculations in general science.
China’s fastest supercomputer unveiled
It will not be long before China’s fastest super computer “Tianhe-1,” the name of which means Milky Way, is to be equipped with Chinese-made central processing unit chips, replacing the only part of the computer that is imported. At the same time, this signifies that China could rival the world’s most powerful computers. Theoretically, it is capable of more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second when operating at peak speed.
The high-performance computer has been praised as the “Mount Qomolangma” of computers, embodying science and technological competitiveness, and it is an important indicator of overall national strength. Currently, it has become the third key element in research in addition to theory and experimentation, and it is indispensable to economic and social development.
Tianhe-1 is China’s first domestically-made petaflop supercomputer, and it began the phase of debugging and testing in September, according to the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjing.
Earlier this year, the first device of Tianhe-1 was put into operation at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin.
The Tianhe-1 supercomputer system is now providing 24-hour remote network applications and running in good condition. After the petaflop computer system is completed, the calculation tasks will be transferred to it. Currently, the number of users of the National Supercomputing Center in Beijing and Tianjin is gradually increasing.
With high-performance CPU chips, the system’s overall processing power has increased substantially, and its information security is receiving more technological guarantees.
The Tianhe-1 was successfully developed by the Changsha-based National University of Defense Technology in 2009, and China thus became the world’s second country capable of developing petaflop supercomputers, only after the United States.
The Tianhe-1 was ranked fifth on the list of the Top 500 supercomputers issued in November 2009. One second of calculations conducted by Tianhe-1 is equivalent to 88 consecutive years of calculations by 1.3 billion people, and the data that the supercomputer can store is equivalent to the sum of the collections in four national libraries with 27 million books each.
“I was shocked at the milestone breakthrough, which was beyond expectation,” said Zhang Yunquan, a researcher with the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and an organizer of the China Top 100 list, which was released at a national conference on high-performance computers.
“I previously forecast China’s first petaflop computer no earlier than the end of 2010,” said Zhang.
“As far as I know, a combination of CPU and GPU is something new used to make a petaflop computer. A GPU, or graphic processing unit, plays a role as an accelerator to make the computer run faster, but reduces its power consumption and cost” said Li Nan, chief coordinator of the program.
The “Tianhe-1” will mainly be used for animation rendering, biomedical research, aerospace equipment development, processing of resource exploration and satellite remote-sensing data, data analysis for financial engineering, weather forecasts, new materials development and design and theoretical calculations in general science.
Apart from the prestige, having the fastest machine "means that China is taking computing seriously [and] taking steps to spur innovation. China gets it. These machines are useful for industry and it will help them maintain and continue on the current track of industrial growth," Dongarra says.
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