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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."
The big story should be about the air conditioning system for this baby.
Omnis amans amens
This should do a lot for AMD's credibility as a server processor manufacturer. According to the current top500 list, you have to go to number 84 to find an AMD based supercomputer. If these articles are correct, you'll soon have 2 in the top 5. That's quite a change of events.
-- Adam
The inq have a story wondering if just the two mentioned super computers worth of opterons sold have allready outsold the itanics.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Seems it's a lot more complicated to build a network of 2000 boxes than it is to make a web page without broken img links (Link is from the c-net article)
cat
That's what the Three Gorges Dam was for all along. To cool this thing.
-The new supercomputer will run a Chinese-designed Linux operating system.
No. The new supercomputer will run a Linus-designed Linux operating system that has been heavily modified to suit the tastes of the Chinese. Counter to popular belief, the Chinese did not design Linux.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
If China Syndrome is when the core of a nuclear plant gets so hot that it starts to melt through the earth's core, theoretically towards China...
What is it called when hundreds of AMD CPU's get equally hot and start to melt through the earth's core, theoretically towards the US?
Maybe its just me...but it seems like there is increasing competition for the top supercomputer. Japan holds the top at the moment, and the US is home to the second most powerful...and now china is entering into the fray. Of course there undoubtely other countries besides the top 3 that are trying to earn a place as well. I wonder if India will be next?
Holy crap! That's about 6,666 flops per Chinese citizen!
;-)
fine, so they could save many pocket calculators...
The University of Kentucky is still doing interesting things with Athlons & Linux. Just about two weeks ago, a group there built KASY0, which they expect to set a new price/performance record at better than 1GFLOPS/$100. More about KASY0 here.
Ever notice how Slashdot stories often have far too many links? Since the front page doesn't get the little [slashot.org]-style URL warnings, I'm always afraid of being linked to a certain .cx site or a disturbing picture of a girl... spewing.... something... This article was pretty good, though. it didn't link to easy-to-find pages like Google, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft, etc.
Oh well, Slashdot, you are my friend!
In one corner: Darl McBride, the SCO Group, and two dozen lawyers.
In the other corner: the People's Liberation Army.
Yeah, I'd pay to see that.
Maj. Kong
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
None of the links I bothered to click on even touched - as far as my skimming of the articles revealed - anything about why the chinese has opted for a variation on Linux, instead of one of the commercial unixes, Wondows (yeah, right) or something along those lines. Does it adapt better to this scale? Is it because it's essentially free (as in 'no licenses')? If it the reds fear of a backdoor in the system if they buy a commercial product?
Don't get me wrong, a supercomputer running on Linux is cool and all that, but I would like to know more about the logic that dictates the choice of OS in such an application. Suggestions?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I thought we weren't supposed to export supercomputing technologies to China? When did that change?
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Does this make Linus a communist or a terrorist?
Cite:
hang brain.
What are the odds China will release its modified GPL code to the rest of the world?
There's a lawsuit I'd love to see. Linus Torvalds/FSF vs. The People's Republic of China.
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 agree that China will take over the #1 spot in the future (but not in 20 years--more like 50 years). However, the advantage is not as big as you think. Consider the points you mentioned:
...the US should join the EU as an equal partner...
Population:
A lot of people seem to forget the downside of large populations. Large populations have increased social problems (my theory is that population ahd social issues are correlated in a non-linear manner). Things like crime, unemployment, famine, disease, etc are much more problematic with a large population. For instance, the biggest challenge facing China over the next 20 years will be figuring out what to do with the massive number of layed off workers due to elimination of government companies. There are millions of Chinese that are unemployed and flocking to the cities. These people's lives need to be considered. Possible side-effects of this problem include high crime, loss/decrease of worker rights, horrible sanitary conditions in cities... all the way to potential collapse of Communism itself. If Communism collapses, all these predictions will be moot...
Education system:
China actually has very good educational system--all so-called Communist countries do. Don't forget that USA isn't that much better. There are large numbers of Americans who cannot write properly (bad grammer, spelling, etc). There are many Americans who can't even do high-school math. At the rate that USA is going, these things will just get worse. I claim that social problems are non-linear and what this means here is that people who fell through the educational system will likely not emphasize school to their kids, and so on.
Traditions:
I don't think tradition really plays a role. I mean just look at Japan, which is very tradionalist--not that liberal at all. Yet it did well for the last few decades. Besides, what you are saying is contradictory. Capitalism rewards and requires greed, violence (to enforce authority or steal resources from other countries), ignorance of family values, etc. If anything, China will be worse off due to its traditions...
Resources:
Resources are meaningless under capitalism. All that matters is money--wealth! You can buy whatever you don't have, and if that doesn't work out invade countries and steal their resources. This is how USA has been going on for the last 50 years. USA consumes more than they can. Believe it or not, USA imports more than it exports with practically every country. Resources haven't played a role for USA, and it won't for China either. Remember: you can buy anything! Including human labour...
Legal bonds:
Not sure what to say here... I don't know how much this matters. From a socialist point of view, being open shifts the benefit to the population as a whole; capitalists, of course, argue that this is detrimental to innovation (eg. a capitalist would say that you can't have software development businesses in China because piracy is rampant). I guess it boils down to which side of the spectrum you are on.
Less restricted goverment:
If the govt has to spend less on social issues and in upholding human rights, it is actually a very negative thing. There have been more revolutions, overthrow of govt, etc due to social issues and human rights issues than anything else. People don't overthrow governments to gain freedom; they overthrow governments because they are discriminated against or are starving. If China skimps on social infrastructure/etc it won't last very long IMO.
Instead of concentration on their nationalist isolational politics, the US should come back to their very own sources.
USA has NOT been practicing isolationalism since WWII. They are not called an imperial power for nothing...
A superpower EQUAL to others? lol When have superpowers ever been concerned with others? If anything, USA wi
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
I am working in several projects with Chinees programmers educated back in China. Also I am working with Indian, Russian, West-Europian and North American programmers. I would say that Chinees and Russian are the best. Well, Russians are smarter a bit and their eduction is often evn overkilling, but they are slow and they do not have any sense of a discipline (like artists, they write the code they haven't been asked and they forget to write the code they've been asked). Indian programmers are very fast and have extreme sense of discipline, but that hurts their creativity a lot, besides Indian education is not really good. North American programmers are slow, with no creativity and a very poor education (most of American programmers I know barely know elementary math calculus). Chinese and West-Europian programmers are fast, disciplined and well (optimally) educated.
Having said that I should add that Russian education is going down in its quality very rapidly. Europian ediaction keeps the same. North American education has no hope in any near time. Chinese and Indian education is growing. Thus, counting other logic (especially IP and patents) I think that China has a lot of future. All they need is to maintain a political stability by slowly giving up to their people more and more freedom, but doing it very slow (Soviet Union is collapsed b/c people receive too much of freedom rapidly at on time - too fast to egt using it properly).
Less is more !
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.
The US hasn't performed live nuclear tests in quite a while (20 years?). There are two reasons why sims aren't enough: 1) They are based on theories that don't always match reality and 2) they cannot simulate *everything*.
:)
Don't get me wrong, theories and simulations are great for preliminary work, but in the end you have to test it to be sure. On the wall over my monitor right now is a board from the Cray 1-S/1000, used at Kirtland AFB in 1980 for blast effects sims.
Besides, the world could use a good 10-30 megaton test every decade or so. It would give the media a chance to remind everyone just how dangerous and powerful they are. Good photo op, too.
"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."
Vote for Pedro