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標題: Chinese Edge Toward Supercomputing Record [打印本頁]

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-5-31 14:58 標題: Chinese Edge Toward Supercomputing Record

本帖最後由 peter236 於 2010-5-31 15:00 編輯

May 30, 2010
Chinese Edge Toward Supercomputing Record
By JOHN MARKOFF

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/0 ... e.html?ref=business

Editors' Note Appended

SAN FRANCISCO — A Chinese supercomputer has ranked as the world’s second fastest machine, surpassing European and Japanese systems and underscoring China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology.

The Dawning Nebulae, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops — the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations per second — in the twice annual ranking of the world’s fastest 500 hundred computers.

The newest Top 500 ranking was made public on Monday at the International Supercomputer Conference in Hamburg, Germany.

The Chinese machine is actually now ranked as the world’s fastest in terms of theoretical peak performance, but that is considered a less significant measure than the actual computing speed achieved on a standardized computing test.

The world’s fastest computer remains the Cray Jaguar supercomputer, based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Last November it was measured at 1.75 petaflops.

In the previous year’s ranking, the Chinese had the fifth fastest computer, a system that was based at a National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. That machine has now dropped to seventh in the rankings.

The U.S. continues to be both the dominant manufacturer as well as the nation with the most supercomputers on the Top 500 ranking. This year, the U.S. had 282 of the world’s fastest 500 computers, an increase from 277 last November. However, the Chinese appear to be intent on challenging U.S. dominance. There had been some expectation that they would make an effort to complete a system based on Chinese designed components in time for the June ranking. The Nebulae is based on chips from Intel and Nvidia.

The new system, which is based on a microprocessor that has been designed and manufactured in China, is now expected later this year. A number of supercomputing industry scientists and engineers said that it is possible that the new machine will claim the title of world’s fastest.

“The one development that is really clear is that the Chinese are pushing at the high end,” said Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computing science at Lawrence Berkeley laboratory.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of this year they surpass the scientific computing power of the EU countries combined and have a computer system with an achieved performance to reach the number one position on the Top 500,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee and one of the researchers who has organized the Top 500 ranking.

The U.S. designed the first machines that were defined as supercomputers during the 1960s and has rarely been dislodged from his controlling position as technology leader. In 2002, however, the Japanese Government’s Earth Simulator set off shockwaves in Washington D.C. when that system briefly claimed the number one position on the Top 500 list.

The U.S. began investing heavily in the computing systems which are used for scientific and engineering problems ranging from climate simulation to automotive design. The U.S. broke the petaflop barrier in 2008 and is now preparing to launch another sustained push to build systems capable of computing at what is known as exascale performance — one thousand times faster than today’s fastest systems. The goal is to reach that technology generation sometime between 2018 and 2020.

“Computational scientists in various areas, such as climate, nuclear energy, combustion, advanced material CO2 sequestration etc., have made the case that they need an exascale system to advance their fields,” said Dr. Dongarra.

Editors' Note: May 31, 2010

An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of the work performed by the Cray Jaguar supercomputer based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used for unclassified research.

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-5-31 15:02

China is now progressing rapidly in microprocessor technology.

作者: news 時間: 2010-6-1 12:28

u forgot to highlight

The Nebulae is based on chips from Intel and Nvidia

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-1 14:52

本帖最後由 peter236 於 2010-6-1 14:54 編輯

u forgot to highlight
news 發表於 2010-6-1 12:28

That is the next step. Later this year the new supercomputer will be based on their own Chinese microprocessors.

Of course you wouldn't like to see that, because you hate to see Chinese making their own microprocessors.

作者: mcjohnjohn 時間: 2010-6-1 18:20

Of course you wouldn't like to see that, because you hate to see Chinese making their own microprocessors.
peter236 發表於 2010-6-2 06:52

... 會唔會好易燒架? 如果賣10蚊粒, 我都會買黎玩下既.

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-2 00:21

... 會唔會好易燒架? 如果賣10蚊粒, 我都會買黎玩下既.
mcjohnjohn 發表於 2010-6-1 18:20

You moron, we are talking about the newest Chinese processors to be used in their new supercomputer later this year.

作者: mcjohnjohn 時間: 2010-6-2 00:29

You moron, we are talking about the newest Chinese processors to be used in their new supercompute ...
peter236 發表於 2010-6-2 16:21

既然有好野, 仲乜唔拎出黎益下我呢d 忠心耿耿既中國人民woh~
唔好咁自私啦, 爺爺~
十蚊粒, 十蚊粒, 有買趁手!

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-2 01:23

既然有好野, 仲乜唔拎出黎益下我呢d 忠心耿耿既中國人民woh~
唔好咁自私啦, 爺爺~
十蚊粒, 十蚊粒, 有買趁 ...
mcjohnjohn 發表於 2010-6-2 00:29

Do you think it will that cheap? You need to pay money for performance.

作者: news 時間: 2010-6-2 08:56

im just saying you and friend mr. r are bragging about a chinese supercomputer right now that are running on US chips

作者: rockypath 時間: 2010-6-2 09:06

im just saying you and friend mr. r are bragging about a chinese supercomputer right now that are ru ...
news 發表於 2010-6-2 08:56

What is wrong with building a supercomputer using US chips?

作者: news 時間: 2010-6-2 09:41

What is wrong with building a supercomputer using US chips?
rockypath 發表於 2010-6-2 09:06

nothing wrong it..im just saying nothing really to brag about when the chips the compuater are running on are from US...so still some way to go when there is a true Chinsese supercomputer

作者: rockypath 時間: 2010-6-2 10:00

本帖最後由 rockypath 於 2010-6-2 10:03 編輯

nothing wrong it..im just saying nothing really to brag about when the chips the compuater are run ...
news 發表於 2010-6-2 09:41

If you think we bragged about China building the supercomputer, you should accuse the news reporter who wrote the article. Not us. We just posted the news and we did not make up the story. Wrong target.

If there are chips available, why not just use them. Who would care who the markers are? Just like MJJ said, if you don’t like Intel chip, you can build it with AMD or something else but you just may need more of them, bigger space and better cooling systems.

作者: news 時間: 2010-6-2 10:08

回復 12# rockypath

please point out where I mentioned you and your friend made up the story

and we all know why both you and peter posted that article up

and you didn't even get what im trying to say...so yeah whatever...anyways have a nice day..no point to continue on

作者: habitrailspace 時間: 2010-6-2 10:09

if u posted this:
中国四大发明, 造纸术、指南针、火药、活字印刷术
then everyone would agree with you

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-2 12:01

im just saying you and friend mr. r are bragging about a chinese supercomputer right now that are ru ...
news 發表於 2010-6-2 08:56

Probably most supercomputers, including those in Europe and Japan are using US chips.
We are not talking about who made the chips. We are talking about the technology of supercomputing with tens of thousands of chips, all functioning together doing a job. You don't even know what the topic is.

Later this year, China will be using Chinese chips for their next supercomputer.

作者: Lik 時間: 2010-6-2 13:16

We are not talking about who made the chips. We are talking about the technology of supercomputing with tens of thousands of chips, all functioning together doing a job. You don't even know what the topic is.
peter236 發表於 2010-6-2 12:01

LOL~ Without a computer science degree, I bet you know exactly what you are talking about here~

-Lik

作者: habitrailspace 時間: 2010-6-2 13:36

oh yeah.
building with china chips

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-2 22:02

LOL~ Without a computer science degree, I bet you know exactly what you are talking about here~
...
Lik 發表於 2010-6-2 13:16

Lik, how many object-oriented languages do you know?

作者: mcjohnjohn 時間: 2010-6-2 22:22

Lik, how many object-oriented languages do you know?
peter236 發表於 2010-6-3 14:02

上網google 大把啦...

oo, 我讀書既時候已經開始興, 畢業既時候都有寫下既, 而家就好少搞d 咁既野了.
不過, supercomputing 應該唔係寫oo 啦, assembly 好似arm 用d woh.

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-6-2 22:30

本帖最後由 peter236 於 2010-6-2 22:32 編輯

上網google 大把啦...
oo, 我讀書既時候已經開始興, 畢業既時候都有寫下既, 而家就好少搞d 咁既野了.
...
mcjohnjohn 發表於 2010-6-2 22:22

The important thing is, Lik does not know about coding.

作者: mcjohnjohn 時間: 2010-6-2 22:36

The important thing is, Lik does not know about coding.
peter236 發表於 2010-6-3 14:30

係人都識coding, 睇下code 得好唔好之麻.
我覺得寫program 係一種藝術, 有d 人真係寫到出神入化, 令人歎為觀止的!

作者: peter236 時間: 2010-7-31 20:03

本帖最後由 peter236 於 2010-7-31 20:04 編輯

China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plans

http://www.technologyreview.in/computing/24374/

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plans
The machine will use an unfashionable chip design.
By Christopher Mims

It's official: China's next supercomputer, the petascale Dawning 6000, will be constructed exclusively with home-grown microprocessors. Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson (also known as "Godson") family of CPUs at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also confirms that the supercomputer will run Linux. This is a sharp departure from China's last supercomputer, the Dawning 5000a, which debuted at number 11 on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers in 2008, and was built with AMD chips and ran Windows HPC Server.

The arrival of Dawning 6000 will be an important landmark for the Loongson processor family, which to date has been used only in inexpensive, low-power netbooks and nettop PCs. When the Dawning 5000a was initially announced, it too was meant to be built with Loongson processors, but the Dawning Information Industry Company, which built the computer, eventually went with AMD chips, citing a lack of support for Windows, and the ICT's failure to deliver a sufficiently powerful chip in time.

The Dawning 6000 will be completed by mid-2010 at the latest, says Hu, and could be up and running as early as the end of 2010. It is the second time that a representative from the ICT has promised a supercomputer built entirely using Loongson processors.

The development of Loongson 3 began in 2001 as a product of China's 10th five-year program. All of the chips in the Loongson family are based on the MIPS instruction set--originally developed in the 1980s but now out of favor in desktop and server computers, although still used in many embedded devices. Currently, the Top 500 list is dominated by x86 chips, with non-x86 CPUs powering less than 15 percent of the high-performance systems on the list.

"This is a very high-performance MIPS architecture where, when it's run in a cluster configuration, it becomes very powerful," says Art Swift, vice president of marketing at Sunnyvale, CA-based MIPS Technologies, which developed the MIPS architecture.

A paper published in 2009 proposes using Loongson 3 chips in clusters of up to 16 cores to accomplish extremely high performance. Tom Halfhill, analyst at Microprocessor Report, calculates that in this configuration, meeting the petaflop performance mark (one quadrillion operations per second) could require as few as 782 16-core chips.

Halfhill says the Loongson 3 is little different from the latest-generation chip, Loongson 2F, which is already available in consumer PCs. The main differences are that it includes hardware translation of x86 instructions (used in most of the microprocessors made by Intel and AMD), and it incorporates multiple cores--from four up to a proposed 16--each capable of processing commands independently. Conspicuously absent from the Loongson 3 is multithreading, which allows a single core to execute multiple instructions simultaneously. (Both Intel and Sun have already incorporated multithreading into some of their chips.)

Generations 2 and 3 of the Loongson use the same general-purpose core, but the Loongson 3 tethers more cores together. A quad-core Loongson 3 chip is currently in prototype, and a final, 64-nanometer version of the chip was "taped out" in late December, meaning the final description of the chip will soon be sent to the manufacturer, STMicroelectronics.

While the quad-core Loongson 3 could find applications in everything from desktop PCs to set-top boxes (the chip incorporates additional instructions designed specifically to speed up multimedia playback), an eight-core version will likely be need for the proposed petascale supercomputer. That version will incorporate four regular cores, along with four "GStera" coprocessors designed especially for mathematically intensive calculations. These coprocessors are especially significant because they are better at handling intensive mathematical calculations, including the LINPACK test, which uses linear algebra to benchmark the world's fastest supercomputers, and to determine their ranking (and their owners' bragging rights) in the Top 500 list of supercomputers.

Jack Dongarra, the computer scientist who introduced the LINPACK benchmark, says that the proposed architecture of the Dawning 6000--multi-purpose cores coupled to coprocessors for certain types of mathematical calculations--follows the standard supercomputer design.

The quad-core Loongson 3 already incorporates two 64-bit floating-point units in each of its cores. So in theory it could be used as the commodity chip in a supercomputer. However, it would require vastly more of these cores to achieve the same processing power, says Dongarra.

Intel remains unfazed by the prospect of a new, state-sponsored contender in the field of high-performance computing. "Measuring competitive impact for a product that does not exist [yet] is always problematic, and we generally refrain from doing so," says Chuck Mulloy a spokesperson for Intel. "In our entire history there has never been a time when we didn't face a competitor. We don't expect that to change--in fact we welcome it."

Dongarra cautions that it's pointless to speculate about the performance of the forthcoming Dawning 6000 until benchmarks have been run, not least because the MIPS architecture is nonstandard in high-performance computing. "While I wish them well, I see a lot of challenges to making the whole system work, " says Dongarra. These challenges include having to adapt the software that Dawning runs.

Halfhill, who has traveled to the ICT in Beijing to report on the birth of the Loongson 3, believes that whatever the performance of the system, it's only a matter of time before China builds a home-grown chip competitive with those produced in the West. "Technically there's nothing to stop them from doing world-class processors," he says. "They've got architects and computer scientists just as smart as ours."

Copyright Technology Review 2010.

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