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China Arms Upgraded Tianhe-2A Hybrid Supercomputer (nextplatform.com)
New submitter kipperstem77 shares an excerpt from a report via The Next Platform: The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) has, according to James Lin, vice director for the Center of High Performance Computing (HPC) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who divulged the plans last year, is building one of the three pre-exascale machines [that China is currently investing in], in this case a kicker to the Tianhe-1A CPU-GPU hybrid that was deployed in 2010 and that put China on the HPC map. This exascale system will be installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, not the one in Guangzhou, according to Lin. This machine is expected to use ARM processors, and we think it will very likely use Matrix2000 DSP accelerators, too, but this has not been confirmed. The second pre-exascale machine will be an upgrade to the TaihuLight system using a future Shenwei processor, but it will be installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan. And the third pre-exascale machine being funded by China is being architected in conjunction with AMD, with licensed server processor technology, and which everyone now thinks is going to be based on Epyc processors and possibly with Radeon Instinct GPU coprocessors. The Next Platform has a slide embedded in its report "showing the comparison between Tianhe-2, which was the fastest supercomputer in the world for two years, and Tianhe-2A, which will be vying for the top spot when the next list comes out." Every part of this system shows improvements.
why else name it NUDT?
1st thought: What, missiles? Drones?
2nd thought: Actual arms on the computer.
3rd thought: Dammit, got me.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Are they using the ARM chips as a backup plan or have they even given up on their own efforts?
These processors are fabricated in China
By the way, is China still restricted from access to U.S. Supercomputer technology (seems hardly worth it now)
There are restrictions on supercomputers and also on the latest steppers for fabrication. These restrictions are seldom based on any logical rationale. Remember back in the 1990s when T-shirts were classified as munitions and banned for export?
The most likely outcome of these restrictions is to compel China to develop their own technology, improve it until it matches or improves on western tech, and then take over the market. So we will end up dependent on them.
and perhaps that category should be extended to include A.I.?
The hard part of AI is the software. Restrictions on sharing AI research will push more and more of it out of America.
What else could be the reason.