China has world's fastest supercomputer

[UCAS]

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-06-10/infrastructure/39871911_1_top-500-list-tianhe-1-petaflops

 

China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, aka Milkyway-2, recently measured at speeds of nearly 31 petaflops surpassing the current record holder by 74 per cent, Ars Technica, the technology magazine reported. And it was not even running at its full capacity!

 

The numbers were revealed by University of Tennessee professor Jack Dongarra, who introduced the computer speed measuring Linpack benchmarks, and who helps compile the biannual Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

 

One petaflop is a thousand trillion or one followed by 15 zeroes number of operations per second.

 

According to Ars Technica, the fastest result was achieved using 90 per cent of the machine capacity. The stats come from a five-hour Linpack test using 14,336 nodes and 50 GB of memory of each node.

 

The test results place the Tianhe-2 ahead of the world's current title holder, which is the Cray XK7 system-based Titan at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

 

Scheduled to be installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou before the end of this year, Tianhe-2 is being assembled and tested at China's National University for Defense Technology (NUDT). Once operational, Tianhe-2 "will provide an open platform for research and education and provide high performance computing service for southern China," Dongarra wrote, according to Ars Technica.

 

Does that mean China will nudge Titan off the top of the Top500 list? Time will tell. Interested watchers await June 17, when the latest rankings will be issued as part of the twice-yearly Top500 list. As the official record, that list is updated twice a year with the next list due out on the 17th.

 

Tianhe-2 has a theoretical peak performance of 54.9 petaflops. Measurements for the Top 500 list always fall somewhat short of theoretical peaks, but Tianhe-2 could certainly improve on its score of 30.65 petaflops if it ran Linpack across the entire system.

 

Tianhe-2 is the follow-up to Tianhe-1, which was #1 in the world in November 2010 and ranked eighth in the most recent list, with a speed of 2.57 petaflops.

 

[Invader ZIM]

Fast, you bet, but it wold not have been possible to create unless it was powered by American technology by Intel :lol:

 

http://rt.com/news/china-fastest-supercomputer-milkyway2-379/

 

The powerful system was assembled by Chinese company Inspur using tens of thousands of the latest multicore chips produced by Intel, with an addition of some home-made technology. In total, the supercomputer is said to contain over 3 million processor cores.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Invader ZIM

[EtherealN]

I think you mean Israeli tech... The company is american, they are produced in Malaysia, they are developed in Israel. :)

 

The stock market handles finance, not tech. And the tech for these was developed at Intel's Israeli labs.

[EtherealN]

Can illustrate like this: by your logic Volvo is "Chinese tech". Except development and production is (mostly) in Sweden. So is it Chinese tech because they bought the company, or Swedish tech because it was developed by swedes, in sweden?

[UCAS]

Can illustrate like this: by your logic Volvo is "Chinese tech". Except development and production is (mostly) in Sweden. So is it Chinese tech because they bought the company, or Swedish tech because it was developed by swedes, in sweden?

Not really. Let's think of a better example. The metal for the car was mined in Africa, so by your logic the car is African. All Volvo did was stick it together right?

 

A standard OTS microchip is nothing special. Getting tens of thousands of them working in harmony is a bit more involved than simply gluing them together.

Edited June 16, 2013 by UCAS

[EtherealN]

Except he said "tech", not raw materiel. Of we tslk raw materiel, most of your electronics is Chinese. :P

[UCAS]

Except he said "tech", not raw materiel. Of we tslk raw materiel, most of your electronics is Chinese. :P

The tech is getting 10,000 chips to work together on a task. The tech of a supercomputer is not the tech of a single chip.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspur

Edited June 16, 2013 by UCAS

[EtherealN]

Inspur doesn't seem directly relevant, can you elaborate?

 

We're seeing a chinese company with investment money from the US (same thing again) involved in the driving of the project.

 

But, again, the argument I responded to was that since the CHIPS are INTEL they are US "tech". If you want to argue against my point, start with arguing against my point: I was responding to one specific claim.

 

If you want to argue that there are several nation's tech involved... well duh! Of course it is. ;) I'm not arguing against the multinationality of technology, that's obvious today, I am responding to the very specific claim that this is "US tech". Do you have any objection to me objecting against that classification? If so, please explain it. :)

 

Illustration: what is my computer?

American-owned tech developed in Israel, manyufactured in malaysia, on chinese materiel.

Add Taiwanese tech manufactured in china on chinese materiel.

Probably some Korean in there as well for the displays.

And since I built it myself, from your example of the assembly - I guess it's "swedish tech"?

 

The point is: you can't just take one part of a project or machine, look at where the company has it's HQ, and then decide that the project or machine has a nationality based on where that HQ is located.

Edited June 16, 2013 by EtherealN

[UCAS]

Inspur doesn't seem directly relevant, can you elaborate?

 

We're seeing a chinese company with investment money from the US (same thing again) involved in the driving of the project.

 

But, again, the argument I responded to was that since the CHIPS are INTEL they are US "tech". If you want to argue against my point, start with arguing against my point: I was responding to one specific claim.

 

If you want to argue that there are several nation's tech involved... well duh! Of course it is. ;) I'm not arguing against the multinationality of technology, that's obvious today, I am responding to the very specific claim that this is "US tech". Do you have any objection to me objecting against that classification? If so, please explain it. :)

I see your point, the chips are Israeli but arguably they could have been designed in several countries these days.

 

My response was really to Invader. The most important technology in a supercomputer is the design which makes the 32,000 chips and 48,000 boards all run together. Kind of like how the most important technology in a chip is that which makes the billions of transistors run together. The microchip is only as important to a supercomputer as a transistor is to a microchip.

 

Onward to quantum computers.

[Invader ZIM]

My response was really to Invader. The most important technology in a supercomputer is the design which makes the 32,000 chips and 48,000 boards all run together. Kind of like how the most important technology in a chip is that which makes the billions of transistors run together. The microchip is only as important to a supercomputer as a transistor is to a microchip.

 

Onward to quantum computers.

 

I agree with what both you guys said, but I didn't intend to start up such a debate, I just found it humorous how articles claim a nationality of a system, but when you look deeper into the technology involved it's only possible because of the world economy and contributions from sometimes many different sources.

 

Onward to one-upmanship!! :thumbup:

Edited June 16, 2013 by Invader ZIM

[Cookie]

I just found it humorous how articles claim a nationality of a system

You don´t even need to go outside of the aviation field to see this phenomenon. Many people actually believe Airbus is a French company, or a Boeing airplane consists mainly of US made or developed parts.

[UCAS]

^Yep. The F-35 isn't entirely US either.

[RIPTIDE]

Interesting news... pity most of the posts that followed were.... not so interesting. :doh:

[Invader ZIM]

Yep. The F-35 isn't entirely US either.

 

Exactly, it's quite an effort from many companies spanning multiple countries.

 

Interesting news... pity most of the posts that followed were.... not so interesting.

 

LOL, yea I guess the conversation did go a little downhill for some reason. Sorry about that, I'll chalk it up to me not having my coffee this morning. :)

[RIPTIDE]

 

LOL, yea I guess the conversation did go a little downhill for some reason. Sorry about that, I'll chalk it up to me not having my coffee this morning. :)

The way I see it, if I build my home Beowulf Cluster.... it's MY Beowulf Cluster. It's not China's if all the Mainboards were fabricated there.... it's not the US's either if all the CPU's are Intel, and it isn't Israel's if their Kiryat Plant designed it.... no... It's MY Beowulf. Why? Because I bloody well would have paid for it. ;)

[Invader ZIM]

lol, touche and well said Riptide

[EtherealN]

I agree with what both you guys said, but I didn't intend to start up such a debate, I just found it humorous how articles claim a nationality of a system, but when you look deeper into the technology involved it's only possible because of the world economy and contributions from sometimes many different sources.

 

Onward to one-upmanship!! :thumbup:

 

Simple way to understand this:

 

The Chinese own it.

 

Thus, it is a Chinese supercomputer.

 

Easy. ;)

 

Otherwise you'd start saying that, for example, the Norwegian air force isn't Norwegian since component aircraft thereof are american. Well yes they are, but the planes are still Norwegian. What's important isn't the complex supply, manufacture etcetera chain, what's important is who owns the thing and thus makes use of it.

[Wolfie]

I just want to know if there going to sell this as a server.

[EtherealN]

Sell it as a server?

 

It's a supercomputer. It'll sit in their labs doing whatever calculations their armed forces, univsersities etcetera task it to do, just like all other supercomputers. (Though they just might sell time on it, just like is done for most non-military (and even some military) supercomputing centres across the west.)

 

Anyone (almost) can purchase time one the supercomputing centre in Solna, Stockholm, for example.

[Invader ZIM]

lol, I think Wolfie was making a joke.

 

But back to the subject, I'm curious to see whats next in trying to top this new record in computing power that this Chinese system has achieved.

 

It's how progress is made, a little competition.

[Ells228]

Interesting article and funny debate afterwards ;)

[SkateZilla]

did they steal the plans for this too though