Slashdot Mirror
China Building a 100-petaflop Supercomputer Using Domestic Processors
concealment writes "As the U.S. launched what's expected to be the world's fastest supercomputer at 20 petaflops, China is building a machine that is intended to be five times faster when it is deployed in 2015. China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer will run at 100 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), according to the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center, where the machine will be housed. Tianhe-2 could help keep China competitive with the future supercomputers of other countries, as industry experts estimate machines will start reaching 1,000-petaflop performance by 2018."
And, naturally, it's planned to use a domestically developed MIPS processor
Keep telling yourself that. I am sure you will sleep better at night...
Because that's all America does anymore.
Honestly, given the nature of Chinese copying, plus the kind of overstated and shoddy output we've historically seen from State-Capitalist projects from Soviet governments, I think that the burden is more on the Chinese to make this boast a reality.
Building massive, highly functional supercomputers is not child's play, regardless of your beowulf clusters of hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants experience. It's one thing to cluster a few computers together and to have very specific programs that do very specific kinds of jobs, it's another matter entirely to have hundreds or thousands of microprocessors working in tandem and to be able to simply even allocate their tasks, let alone program for them. There's a reason why every city government has their own supercomputer, they're difficult.
The Chinese government has the resources to build such a computer, but only if they work against corruption and don't delude themselves when they have difficulties in an effort for every middle manager to safe face.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Chinese technology has already gone much farther than you give them credit, and the natural tendency is for them to surpass stagnated US sooner or later. Considering how US has put in place so many impediments to innovation with the excuse of "helping innovation" that is just a matter of time.
And please, although the Chinese government is very corrupt, it is not more corrupt than US government or US corporations.
You're right, but it looks like they've done the latter. http://laotsao.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/sw1600-and-alpha-21164/
It says right in the ShenWei Wikipedia article that it's based on the DEC Alpha but something that strikes me as curious is that your article refers to a chip that lasted from 1995 to 1998. So I am to believe that by outright copying a fifteen year old chip from a processor line that has been extinct for a decade or more has yielded a modern day competitive multiprocessing chip?
You can convince me they copied DEC's work. You can convince me they violated IP laws. You can convince me that it is their societal norm to ignore restrictive IP laws. Hell, I'll tell you that right now. But to say that they are doing no work to build on top of these chips feels like it must be erroneous unless what we see is 1990s technology in the ShenWei processors.
This isn't a black and white scenario here. Yes, it's bad that IP laws have been violated. Yes, it's bad that DEC won't see a dime from any of their work being used. But it is also a good thing to have a competitive architecture arise in the world of computing and also it feels good to have a race with other countries for computing power. I can only hope our super computing budget is considered part of the onerous "defense budget" and our leaders who are concerned with a dick measuring contest can dump tons of money into supercomputers for modeling and simulation to scientists while at the same time being able to give the hallowed talking point of "I increased defense spending."
You can start with someone else's good idea, turn it into a great idea and share some credit, right?
My work here is dung.
Are you confusing them for a country that hasn't already stuck a machine right at the top of the top500 list?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
And please, although the Chinese government is very corrupt, it is not more corrupt than US government or US corporations.
It's very fashionable to overstate the problems of the US. Even with all it's problems it remains one of the most successful systems in the world on any number of levels.
That said, the rampant corruption on China isn't the kind that will interfere with things like building a supercomputer. Quite the opposite in fact. Need a neighborhood demolished or workers expropriated? No problem.
Where as the much smaller level of corruption in the US is almost precisely targeted to screw these kinds of projects. Congressman can't tack on some random spending for their district? Screw over the whole project just to build a reputation so everyone bends over next time.
the natural tendency is for them to surpass stagnated US sooner or later
Probably later. Its common for Chinese fanbois to paint the US as some stagnant, bloated, lethargic country, and in some ways it is, but not in technology. The US still leads the world in technical innovation, and China is still playing catchup, and will for some time. Militarily China is 20 years behind in submarine technology, has one aircraft carrier (Russian surplus), is just now introducing stealth technology in its aircraft, and still sends most of its elite students to US schools for hi-tech education. Oh, and lets not forget the army of hackers the Chinese government STILL employs to spy on American hi-tech corporations right now.
NATURAL tendancy? How is that? 100 years ago China was nation of drug addicts beholden to the British Empire. Natural tendancy my ass. The US is mired in debt and a stuck bureaucracy right now, but to count it out is a bit premature.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'