China’s Homemade Supercomputer May be the Most Efficient Ever

[ChineseTiger1986]

by Christopher Mims
China’s home-grown supercomputer, the Dawning 6000, finally has a launch date: Summer 2011. In terms of raw performance, the machine is not going to be a record breaker, but it will be the first machine in the Top500 to be powered entirely by chips designed entirely by China’s Institute of Computing Technology. Long term, they could be a major threat to Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and their ilk.

Weiwu Hu, lead architect of the Loongson line of chips, announced the launch of the forthcoming supercomputer at the International Solid State Circuits Conference held last week. (Technology Review has been covering the development of this supercomputer for over a year, since the first intimation of its construction in January 2010.)

What’s new as of Hu’s latest announcement is the scale of the machine: 300 teraflops, achieved with 3,000 of the 1-Ghz, 8-core Godson 3B chips. That’s a far cry from the #1 position on the world’s list of the top 500 supercomputers, currently occupied by the 2.56 petaflop Tianhe-1A machine, also built in China, but with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs.

China’s Homemade Supercomputer May be the Most Efficient Ever

 

[Obambam]

by Christopher Mims
China’s home-grown supercomputer, the Dawning 6000, finally has a launch date: Summer 2011. In terms of raw performance, the machine is not going to be a record breaker, but it will be the first machine in the Top500 to be powered entirely by chips designed entirely by China’s Institute of Computing Technology. Long term, they could be a major threat to Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and their ilk.

Weiwu Hu, lead architect of the Loongson line of chips, announced the launch of the forthcoming supercomputer at the International Solid State Circuits Conference held last week. (Technology Review has been covering the development of this supercomputer for over a year, since the first intimation of its construction in January 2010.)

What’s new as of Hu’s latest announcement is the scale of the machine: 300 teraflops, achieved with 3,000 of the 1-Ghz, 8-core Godson 3B chips. That’s a far cry from the #1 position on the world’s list of the top 500 supercomputers, currently occupied by the 2.56 petaflop Tianhe-1A machine, also built in China, but with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs.

China’s Homemade Supercomputer May be the Most Efficient Ever

About time Intel and AMD get a new competitor. I've always been a fan of AMD and their bang for the buck technology. Maybe it would help lower its chipsets even more?

 

[Nomenclature]

I don't see any Chinese company becoming a threat to Intel or AMD unless they manage to get their hands on VIA.

 

[Obambam]

I don't see any Chinese company becoming a threat to Intel or AMD unless they manage to get their hands on VIA.

It will not be an instant threat, probably quite far from that. However, that is not to say that it will not become a fierce competitor over time.

 

[ao333]

Means nothing if the US stops exporting and the EU ceases fabbing chips for your indigineously assembled supercomputer.

Seriously, I bet white Americans and the French are laughing their a s s e s off everytime you feel pride over a machine that is assembled from American-exported or French fabbed chips.

 

[CardSharp]

Means nothing if the US stopped exporting and France stopped fabbing chips for you guys.

Thanks for the obligatory put down on every Chinese computing thread.

 

[SomeGuy]

Means nothing if the US stops exporting and the EU ceases fabbing chips for your indigineously assembled supercomputer.

Seriously, I bet white Americans and the French are laughing their a s s e s off everytime you feel pride over a machine that is assembled from American-exported or French fabbed chips.

1. The Dawning 6000 will not use Intel/AMD chips - that's the whole point. It's going to be totally indigenous.
2. So what if the EU ceases fabbing Loongson chips? They're going to be the only ones losing out because there are foundries in other countries (including China) that can fab them.

 

[Obambam]

Seriously, I bet white Americans and the French are laughing their a s s e s off everytime you feel pride over a machine that is assembled from American-exported or French fabbed chips.

I assure you it is not that. They are just laughing at the Chinese for having more money to spend on supercomputers than they do.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Means nothing if the US stops exporting and the EU ceases fabbing chips for your indigineously assembled supercomputer.

Seriously, I bet white Americans and the French are laughing their a s s e s off everytime you feel pride over a machine that is assembled from American-exported or French fabbed chips.

Well, a petaflops supercomputer with 100% domestic components isn't that bad.

You can bash the Chinese technology by bringing the American one, but French? Gimme a break.