China Intercepts U.S. Restrictions with Homegrown Supercomputer Chips

[Bussard Ramjet]

China can help other nations to build some.

As far as I know China has already done that with Zimbabwe I guess.

China introduces supercomputer to Zim

Now I don't know if it was charity, or was real business.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

As far as I know China has already done that with Zimbabwe I guess.

China introduces supercomputer to Zim

Now I don't know if it was charity, or was real business.

Mostly charity, since we are trying hard to expand our soft power in Africa.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

No, the chips ARE important, basically without the chips, that would seriously limited the computing power of a supercomputer. The only 2 things related to computing power is the RAMs and the Chips, and one goes with another.

But the thing is, Supercomputer as a field is not at all important, beside the R&D value, most semi-conductor foundry uses the blue print of server processor and put into commercial design, however, since Intel is, well, literally the king of commercial/personal computing, the affect will not be much for them.

For China, the effect will not be much either, as supercomputer is not in any major serious field in Chinese Academic circle *** "Commercial" computing have not much of a gap than "Supercomputing" these day, they can simply use off the shelf product to fill the gap anyway. The only thing that threaten Chinese is the Top spot of top 500 supercomputer list, which consider the gap of Chinese processor and US processor, China probably will lose that spot unless they can find a way to equal or even get over US Server technology in the next 2 years. Which by all measurement standard, China is about 10 year + away

The revoking of export license by US government did not actually do much, seems to me, the only thing they are actually aiming for is the Top Spot of Supercomputer, that's it.

and here I thought that it was the interconnects and network topology that were important, which is why very few supercomputing research article talks about the chips or RAM except in parallel architecture on a chip or how to apply existing chips to supercomputing, and only about the interconnects and network topology.

and are you serious that supercomputers not being very important? are you telling me that DOE is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year on something useless?

 

[jhungary]

and here I thought that it was the interconnects and network topology that were important, which is why very few supercomputing research article talks about the chips or RAM except in parallel architecture on a chip or how to apply existing chips to supercomputing, and only about the interconnects and network topology.

and are you serious that supercomputers not being very important? are you telling me that DOE is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year on something useless?

dude, nobody talked about Chips and RAM is because there are NOT MUCH TO TALK ABOUT, that's the basic requirement for computing power.

Interconnect serves as a multiplier of your processor efficiency, in layman term, basically parallel bind your processor so you have a cluster computers where 2 or more slate works as one. What interconnects is important is that how your interconnects uses different node in different network topology to increase connectivity of each node and thus provide a more flexible computing power (by smartly select which note to activate, you decrease congestion and increase computing power.)

However, where are those power coming from? The 3,000 or so processor itself.

People talk about Network Topology and interconnects because they can be fixed and increase the speed of the machine without getting a overhaul of hardware, which will basically cost you millions if not billions of dollar. But the core power of computing itself laid on the processor, if they are crap, there are no point using top of the line topology or architecture, it would be like using a Boxer turbo from a Porsche GT in your normal day Toyota. If you can fit one, it will still be better than any other normal day runabout Toyota, but it will never beat a Porsche with a crap turbo.

Does that make sense to you

 

[Beidou2020]

China can help other nations to build some.

China should build supercomputers for countries like Iran since China can build supercomputers with all domestic components.

China no longer needs the US for supercomputers.

 

[TaiShang]

Africa Focus: China introduces supercomputer to Zimbabwe

Africa Focus: China introduces supercomputer to Zimbabwe

HARARE -- A Chinese-built supercomputer, with processing capacity of 36 trillion calculations per second, was commissioned Friday in Zimbabwe, one of a very few African countries to equip with a supercomputer.

The facility, housed in University of Zimbabwe, was provided by China's leading personal computer and server manufacturer Inspur Group with a 5.5 million U.S. dollars interest-free loan committed by the Chinese government.

The supercomputer is expected to be used in agriculture, weather forecast, mining, gene technology, and stimulation, enabling Zimbabwe's scientific research to make a great leap forward for the next five to ten years, said Huang Gang, deputy president of Inspur Group.

Huang said while the United States owns the world's leading supercomputer technology, it is China that brings such technology to the world of developing countries with affordable cost. Till now, Inspur has helped Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Cuba own and operate high performance computing centers.

He said, armed with the supercomputer, scientists in Zimbabwe can now process big data, for example, in weather forecasting to predict weather changes with unprecedented precision. The same technology can also help miners pinpoint sites that hold oil and other key mineral resources.

"If used properly and extensively, the supercomputer can bring fundamental changes to Zimbabwe – enabling sophisticated researches to be conducted and becoming a hub for training cloud computing experts in Africa," Huang said. "Its contribution to national development can't be rivaled by the building of government offices and roads, the mainstream Chinese-aid projects. "

Supercomputer is a rarity not just in Africa, but across the developing world. Over a year since the agreement was signed, dozens of Zimbabwean researchers received trainings both in Zimbabwe and China to be able to operate the system.

A committee on high performance computing was set up, pooling together experts from learning and research institutes across the country and from different industries.

Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe Lin Lin said the commission of the high performance computing center, enabling Zimbabwe to become the fourth country in Africa to own such a facility, is an important part of China-Zimbabwe cooperation that "both sides should be proud of."

Zimbabwe's Minister of High Education Oppah Muchinguri said as a country, Zimbabwe has high expectations on the nation's future in the area of computation science and engineering, which will provide new and emerging technology that is fundament for social and economic transformation.

Copyright2015 Xinhua News Agency

All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.