China’s Defense University builds World Third fastest supercomputer

[aimarraul]

China’s Defense University builds World Third fastest supercomputer

October.29 (China Military News Reporting by Johnathan Weng) — The Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) unveiled Thursday China’s fastest supercomputer, also the World Third fastest computer, which is able to do more than one quadrillion calculations per second theoretically at its peak speed.

China name this supercomputer as “Tianhe-I” (天河一号 meaning River in Sky), which later will be installed in Tianjin. As matter of fact, Tianjin is one of two cities with “Super computing center”

China announces that “Tianhe-I”’s theoretical peak performance can reach 1.2 petaFLOPS and highest LINPACK score is 563.1 teraFLOPS. The rank of “Tianhe-I” peak performance has exceeded the JUGENE (1.0 petaFLOPS) of Jülich Research Centre and its LINPACK score overrun NASA’s Pleiades.

China says the birth of “Tianhe-1″ let China be the second country to develop petaFLOP level supercomputer beside U.S..

“Tianhe-I” has 6,144 Intel CPUs and 5,120 AMD GPUs, Total Memory is 98TB, point-to-point communication bandwidth is 40Gbps. “Tianhe-I” has 103 racks, weights 155 tons and occupies nearly 1,000 square metres. According to Chinese news resources, “Tianhe-I” will be used in computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules; physical simulations of airplanes and spaceships. China does not disclose whether this supercomputer will be used in military purposes, such as nuclear weapon development.

“Tianhe-I” has an Architecture of Vector processing Coordination Configurable Parallel System. “Tianhe-I” is one project of well-known “863 Plan” and was initiate in 2008.

Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) is also the developer of China’s first gigaFLOPS supercomputer “Yinhe”.

At present, the performance score has not been confirmed by Top500.org.

 

[trident2010]

China beats US with fastest supercomputer



BEIJING: China is set to trump the US to take the number one spot for the fastest supercomputer ever made in a survey of the world's zippiest machines, it was reported.

Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, has a sustained computing speed of 2,507 trillion calculations per second, making it the fastest computer in China on a list published Thursday.

But it is also 1.4 times faster that the world's current fastest ranked supercomputer in the US, housed at a national laboratory in Tennessee, according to the New York Times.

Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed "thinking" at the National Center for Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin -- using mostly chips designed by US companies.

The Tianjin Meteorological Bureau and the National Offshore Oil Corporation data centre have both started trials using the computer.

"It can also serve the animation industry and bio-medical research," Liu Guangming, the supercomputing centre's director, told state news agency Xinhua.

According to Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings which are due to be released next week, the Chinese beast "blows away the existing number one machine."

"We don't close the books until November 1, but I would say it is unlikely we will see a system that is faster," he told the New York Times.

It is not the first time, however, that the US has had its digital crown stolen by an Asian upstart. In 2002, Japan made a machine with more power than the top 20 American computers put together.

Japan is also working on a new machine called "K Computer" in a bid to take the supercomputing crown. Computer designer Steven J Wallach is not overly worried by China's rise to computing superpower.

"It's interesting, but it's like getting to the four-minute mile," he told the New York Times. "The world didn't stop. This is just a snapshot in time. They want to show they are number one in the world, no matter what it is."



China beats US with fastest supercomputer - The Times of India

 

[rubyjackass]

Is it that difficult to make a super computer? AFAI can think, a need is the only limitation for building the fastest super computer. Most of them work on similar processors anyway. Looking for comments from knowledgable people.

 

[below_freezing]

Is it that difficult to make a super computer? AFAI can think, a need is the only limitation for building the fastest super computer. Most of them work on similar processors anyway. Looking for comments from knowledgable people.

The programming and the interface between each processor is the key, not the processor itself.

 

[CardSharp]

The programming and the interface between each processor is the key, not the processor itself.

how you string those suckers up and make them work is the tricky part. Processor have hit a cost/benefit wall in terms of practical technology.