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China Building Linux-Based 10 Teraflop Supercomputer
securitas writes "CNet Asia reports that China is building a 2000-processor supercomputer based on the AMD Opteron 64-bit CPU. The new supercomputer will run a Chinese-designed Linux operating system. Based on current standings, the resulting 10-teraflop machine will make it the third most powerful supercomputer in the world. The Red Grid project is being built by Dawning Information Industry and China's National Research Centre for Intelligent Computing Systems. The Red Grid/Dawning 4000A is expected to be complete by June 2004. But China has competition - weighing in at 40 teraflops, the Cray Red Storm AMD-based 10,000-Opteron supercomputer built for Sandia National Labs will become the supercomputer heavyweight next year. More at Infoworld , InternetNews and Yahoo."
Well first of all, I am an American citizen.
... for practically as long as I can remember. Most people in the US would be happy if the US goverment would just mind it's own buisness, and the more we fuck with the world, the more the rest of the world wishes the same.
But why does anyone have to "win" as the most powerful nation? More importantly, why does it have to be the united states? Truthfully I'd be happy if the US finally slid into 2nd place. Part of the problem with the govenment today is that they're completely wrapped up in maintaining the power of the US. We've become something akin to a cop who maintains his rule with bullying. The govement should start worrying about the problems of its own people instead of playing these political chess games. Year after year I hear people asking, why are we over in that country doing that?
You're not. However these days anyone with a technical inclinations, lots of ordinary PC's, and free software can put a super computer together themselves. So in other words, trying to limit it have become meaningless.
Population: sheer mass counts. If US has 1 genius in 1 million people, than we have 400 geniuses in the US. But China would have 1.100 which is quite an advantage.
Population is more of a disadvantage than an advantage at this point. And "genius" isn't just a matter of statistics, it requires an environment that fosters it. Renaissance Venice didn't have a very high population.
Education system: The US has a better starting position, but China is rapidly gaining. Chinese have thrown away all Mao anti-illectual rubbish and know to value knowledge these days.
Unfortunately they've replaced the Maoist garbage with extremist nationalist garbage that is just as dangerous. And the extreme poverty that so much of China lives in drags down the education system. There are computer science departments in some area colleges that don't have, well, any computers.
Traditions: The confucian traditions imply total devotion to work and society. However, the US tradition imply total devotion to self interest and egoism. So, the Chinese society have much better chance to complete large scale and high effort projects.
Confucianism isn't as strong as it once was, which is a good thing; it's a very nasty, hierarchical, heavily class-based system. Its adherence to family and social obligations also encourages nepotism and cronyism, which is one of the central reasons why so many third-world economies hit the ropes so easily.
Take e.g. Iraq we have our boys just a few months there, but already the press is whining that some of them are dying. Even worse the US economic system is based on these "values", so we can't change them without having our society collapse.
Well it sounds like you have a definite ideological bias there, but the diversity of viewpoints is an advantage, not a disadvantage (though the right inevitably tries to smear dissent as "unpatriotic", at least when they're in power).
Resources: China has many natural resources. Even more there are much resources in the neighboring countries.
China has a fair amount of resources due to it's sheer size, but they're missing some things (such as enough arable land).
These are very weak, so China has just to blackmail or to conquer them to get the resources.
Well I definitely disagree with this. China is actually surrounded by smaller, yet militarily stronger countries. India is weaker than China in terms of pure military power, but they do have nuclear weapons and would probably react to any incursion with them. Japan has a smaller military, but far more advanced, and would probably beat China even without US help. Taiwan also has a very small, but very high-tech military, and China's obsolete transports and air force would be cut down pretty quickly if they tried anything. Russia, even now, is no pushover, and has a stronger military and a larger nuclear arsenal if it came to that. The southeast side of the country is slightly less intimidating, but I don't even think the Chinese government will go near the psychopaths who run North Korea.
Legal bonds: there is not much copyright and IP enforced in China. So free from all patent and IP bounds China's economics and science can develop much faster.
Yes, but I don't think they have the economy to drive the science, even if they have the information. And to get the foreign investment they really crave they'll have to start cracking down on IP issues.
Less restricted goverment: In China the goverment doesn't have to obey very much restrictions. So they don't have to spend so much money on their own people or to protect human rights.
True, which results in such things as the Three Gorges Dam. But a tyrannical government has no stability, as history has shown again and again.
I would like to add that the US has the advantage in education. US universities are very selective in accepting foreign students. Students with perfect scores on standardized tests are a minimum requirement. These bright minds help with US research and not Chinese projects. In a way, one can say that US exploits China out of their brightest minds.
BTW, I dont understand why having a conversation with a foreign student in english is difficult. They can score perfectly on standardized exams.
I wonder what the interconnect between the nodes will be. Gigabit ethernet seems far too slow. There is Myrinet, Dolphin, and other HPC interconnects. 10Gb ethernet is still really expensive and there is only one NIC on the market (from Intel). InfiniBand would make a lot of sense...10 Gb, much cheaper than 10Gb Ethernet, much lower latency, and already supports MPI and TCP/IP offloaded sockets.
Of course maybe for systems this large, a special machine specific interconnect makes sense.
-- soldack
So, totalitarian governments that don't acknowledge, let alone respect, the rights of their people are a GOOD thing? You must love Macchiavelli. I think the Chinese government is going to implode in the coming decades. And I'm going to enjoy watching their government leaders get hanged on CNN. Yeah, they are a large country. They are also a country with an evil government. Hopefully that government will fall soon.
If you don't fuck with anyone, sooner or later someone will decide that you are weak and fuck with you.
I agree. This is how the world goes round.
The Chinese are already trying to push the US, see how far they can go. Spy plane incident? Spies in Los Alamos? Dumping goods into our markets? We need to fuck with them a little more then we are, in my opinion.
I'm not from China, but why do you assume only Americans (and the odd European here and there) are going to be reading Slashdot? Do you know how offensively aggressive it sounds to hear "I'm gonna fuck with your country"? This is exactly why some people dislike Americans. "All right, let's go fuck with fucking moronic Americans". How does that sound?
And you've got to be kidding if you don't think the US doesn't spy on other countries. In which case, it's just "the game" that other people spy on the US. French agents have been caught before (this is probably not such a good example now since the French are practically "enemies", eh?). I'll bet the Israelis, Germans etc. have their people just... paying attention to what the Americans are doing. Even the British?
Why are they spending all that money are military hardware if they aren't planning on using it?
You answered yourself in the first place. This is a world where if you aren't strong someone will come around and push you around. Don't forget, the mainland Chinese lost millions of people to the Japanese (for which the Japanese STILL have not even brought themselves to officially and properly apologise for, would you believe it). They've fought a war with the Indians. Even when they were both Communist the Russians and the Chinese weren't all that friendly. If you've got a large country, you want a large and modern army. End of story.
We should officially declare Taiwan a legit country and tell the mainland Chinese to go fuck off.
I agree. I believe Taiwan is a country. But, again, you're demonstrating "American Shortsightedness Combined With Arrogance". What on earth makes you think that it's the AMERICANS who should be "declaring Taiwan a legit country"? A significant proportion (more than half if my memory serves) during their last polls indicated they themselves did not want this step to be taken. Considering the minute they do so, the shooting starts, and you are going to be sitting safely at home in the US - I am making the assumption that you are not in the US armed forces and won't be part of those getting shot at while defending Taiwan, assuming Bush doesn't back out of US commitments to do so - and Taiwanese civilians etc. are going to be doing most of the dying, if anyone is going to be declaring Taiwan a legit country it should be the Taiwanese.
Taking away their "most favored nation" trading status
laugh. Are you sure the Americans making the decisions are willing to lose the kind of money they will lose by doing so? Plenty of people in mainland China would be incredibly happy if the US government would lean harder to try to make them start releasing poltiical prisoners etc. - but you're forgetting it's the money that talks, including (especially?) in the US political-economic system.
"Their attitude is shockingly different from the Russians who immigrated to the USA during the Soviet era." That is because China is shockingly different from USSR and from the image of an ultra evil state that the Western media has build up over the years. Are you telling me that you know more about China than people who have lived there for most of their lives? That you care more about the well beings of those people than themselves?
"By contrast, the Chinese immigrants feel that a Chinese supercomputer challenging the best American supercomputer is a wonderful thing." Please make sense! Are you saying that Chinese people should feel good about been left behind in technological advancements?
Of course China is no where near a model society for human right and personal freedom at its current state. It still needs much reform and breaking down of the current system to improve the lives of average Chinese citizen. But tell a real Chinese about your fabricated horror stories about the evilness of Chinese government and see how much their agree with you? When you find out about their disagreements with you, are you going to insist that they hold a false view of what is like to be a real Chinese and you are the true protector of Chinese human right?
It is ironic how some people of some Western countries, especially those who had grossly violated other people's human rights and freedom, through acts of forced opium trade, slavery, genocide, and centuries of aggressions and wars, quickly turned around to lecture to the same people whom they thoroughly oppressed, about the need for human rights and freedoms. Why Chinese need to have their own supercomputers? To avoid another Nanjing Massacre, to avoid another Unit 731, to avoid another era of been forced to allow its people to take deadly drugs at the points of gunships from drug smuggling empire who proclaim to hold a higher moral ground.
If you care at all about the well being of Chinese people, give Chinese people peace and time to develop. Did US become a championed of human right protector overnight? Although its constitution dictated that all human being should be treated equally, was that the practice of US until 1960s? Should another great power, if there was one, step in and
take over US at a time when brutal violation of human rights and freedoms took place in US, in an effort to help US citizens? Democracy is a great concept, so let Chinese people have a chance to develop towards that goal after centuries of chaos and war, instead of been forced to face yet more hostile foreign forces.
"3 Traditions: The confucian traditions imply total devotion to work and society. However, the US tradition imply total devotion to self interest and egoism. So, the Chinese society have much better chance to complete large scale and high effort projects. The US have problems there. Take e.g. Iraq we have our boys just a few months there, but already the press is whining that some of them are dying. Even worse the US economic system is based on these "values", so we can't change them without having our society collapse."
Self interest is what has made America great. It's no coincidence that the Soviet Union collapsed and China is on a slow road toward capitalism. A person is motivated to accomplish more and work harder when he directly benefits from his effort. Communism denies this by taking the product of labor and distrubuting it based on need, rather than merit.
" 6. Less restricted goverment: In China the goverment doesn't have to obey very much restrictions. So they don't have to spend so much money on their own people or to protect human rights. "
People without basic freedoms are less likely to be productive since they do not benefit from their labor.
Socialism is like feudalism, with the exception that the ruling class uses altruism as a weapon to disarm those who claim what they are doing is immoral. "It can't be immoral because I'm ruling selflessly in the name of the poor."
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