[LINK] Supercomputers, congratulations China

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Chinese Supercomputer Wrests Title From U.S.
By ASHLEE VANCE www.nytimes.com Oct 28, 2010


A Chinese scientific research center has built the fastest supercomputer 
ever made, replacing the United States as maker of the swiftest machine, 
and giving China bragging rights as a technology superpower. 

The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the 
current top computer, which is at a national laboratory in Tennessee, as 
measured by the standard test used to gauge how well the systems handle 
mathematical calculations, said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee 
computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings. 

Although the official list of the top 500 fastest machines, which comes 
out every six months, is not due to be completed by Mr. Dongarra until 
next week, he said the Chinese computer “blows away the existing No. 1 
machine.” He added, “We don’t close the books until Nov. 1, but I would 
say it is unlikely we will see a system that is faster.” 

Officials from the Chinese research center, the National University of 
Defense Technology, are expected to reveal the computer’s performance on 
Thursday at a conference in Beijing. The center says it is “under the 
dual supervision of the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of 
Education.” 

The race to build the fastest supercomputer has become a source of 
national pride as these machines are valued for their ability to solve 
problems critical to national interests in areas like defense, energy, 
finance and science. Supercomputing technology also finds its way into 
mainstream business; oil and gas companies use it to find reservoirs and 
Wall Street traders use it for superquick automated trades. Procter & 
Gamble even uses supercomputers to make sure that Pringles go into cans 
without breaking. 

And typically, research centers with large supercomputers are magnets for 
top scientific talent, adding significance to the presence of the 
machines well beyond just cranking through calculations. 

Over the last decade, the Chinese have steadily inched up in the rankings 
of supercomputers. Tianhe-1A stands as the culmination of billions of 
dollars in investment and scientific development, as China has gone from 
a computing afterthought to a world technology superpower. 

“What is scary about this is that the U.S. dominance in high-performance 
computing is at risk,” said Wu-chun Feng, a supercomputing expert and 
professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “One 
could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future.” 

Modern supercomputers are built by combining thousands of small computer 
servers and using software to turn them into a single entity. In that 
sense, any organization with enough money and expertise can buy what 
amount to off-the-shelf components and create a fast machine. 

The Chinese system follows that model by linking thousands upon thousands 
of chips made by the American companies Intel and Nvidia. But the secret 
sauce behind the system — and the technological achievement — is the 
interconnect, or networking technology, developed by Chinese researchers 
that shuttles data back and forth across the smaller computers at 
breakneck rates, Mr. Dongarra said. 

“That technology was built by them,” Mr. Dongarra said. “They are taking 
supercomputing very seriously and making a deep commitment.” 

The Chinese interconnect can handle data at about twice the speed of a 
common interconnect called InfiniBand used in many supercomputers. 

For decades, the United States has developed most of the underlying 
technology that goes into the massive supercomputers and has built the 
largest, fastest machines at research laboratories and universities. Some 
of the top systems simulate the effects of nuclear weapons, while others 
predict the weather and aid in energy research. 

In 2002, the United States lost its crown as supercomputing kingpin for 
the first time in stunning fashion when Japan unveiled a machine with 
more horsepower than the top 20 American computers combined. The United 
States government responded in kind, forming groups to plot a comeback 
and pouring money into supercomputing projects. The United States 
regained its leadership status in 2004, and has kept it, until now. 

At the computing conference on Thursday in China, the researchers will 
discuss how they are using the new system for scientific research in 
fields like astrophysics and bio-molecular modeling. Tianhe-1A, which is 
housed in a building at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, 
can perform mathematical operations about 29 million times faster than 
one of the earliest supercomputers, built in 1976. 

For the record, it performs 2.5 times 10 to the 15th power mathematical 
operations per second. 

Mr. Dongarra said a long-running Chinese project to build chips to rival 
those from Intel and others remained under way and looked 
promising. “It’s not quite there yet, but it will be in a year or two,” 
he said. 

He also said that in November, when the list comes out, he expected a 
second Chinese computer to be in the top five, culminating years of 
investment. 

“The Japanese came out of nowhere and really caught people off guard,” 
Mr. Feng said. “With China, you could see this one coming.” 

Steven J. Wallach, a well-known computer designer, played down the 
importance of taking the top spot on the supercomputer rankings. 

“It’s interesting, but it’s like getting to the four-minute mile,” Mr. 
Wallach said. “The world didn’t stop. This is just a snapshot in time.” 

The research labs often spend weeks tuning their systems to perform well 
on the standard horsepower test. But just because a system can hammer 
through trillions of calculations per second does not mean it will do 
well on the specialized jobs that researchers want to use it for, Mr. 
Wallach added. 

The United States has plans in place to make much faster machines out of 
proprietary components and to advance the software used by these systems 
so that they are easy for researchers to use. But those computers remain 
years away, and for now, China is king. 

“They want to show they are No. 1 in the world, no matter what it is,” 
Mr. Wallach said. “I don’t blame them.” 

A version of this article appeared in print on October 28, 2010, on page 
A1 of the New York edition.

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Cheers,
Stephen