China claims supercomputer crown
Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)
Posts: 1,720
China claims supercomputer crown
Tianhe supercomputer, Nvidia The Tianhe-1A supercomputer is about 50% faster than its closest rival.
China has claimed the top spot on the list of the world's supercomputers.
The title has gone to China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer that is capable of carrying out more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second.
To reach such high speeds the machine draws on more than 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips.
The claim to be the fastest machine on the planet has been ratified by the Top 500 Organisation which maintains a list of the most powerful machines.
High power
China's Tianhe-1A (Milky Way) has taken over the top spot from America's XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee that can carry out only 1.75 petaflops per second. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.
The news about the machine broke just before the publication of the biennial Top 500 Supercomputer list which ranks the world's most powerful machines.
Prof Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, one of the computer scientists who helps to compile the list, said China's claim was legitimate.
"This is all true," he told BBC News. "I was in China last week and talked with the designers, saw the system, and verified the results."
He added: "I would say it's 47% faster than the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's machine, 1.7 Pflops (ORNL system) to 2.5 Pflops (Chinese system)."
Tianhe-1A is unusual in that it unites thousands of Intel processors with thousands of graphics cards made by Nvidia.
The chips inside graphics cards are typically made up of small arithmetical units that can carry out simple sums very quickly. By contrast, Intel chips are typically used to carry out more complicated mathematical operations.
The machine houses its processors in more than 100 fridge-sized cabinets and together these weigh more than 155 tonnes.
Based in China's National Center for Supercomputing in the city of Tianjin, the computer has already started to do work for the local weather service and the National Offshore Oil Corporation.
News Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11644252
Tianhe supercomputer, Nvidia The Tianhe-1A supercomputer is about 50% faster than its closest rival.
China has claimed the top spot on the list of the world's supercomputers.
The title has gone to China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer that is capable of carrying out more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second.
To reach such high speeds the machine draws on more than 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips.
The claim to be the fastest machine on the planet has been ratified by the Top 500 Organisation which maintains a list of the most powerful machines.
High power
China's Tianhe-1A (Milky Way) has taken over the top spot from America's XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee that can carry out only 1.75 petaflops per second. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.
The news about the machine broke just before the publication of the biennial Top 500 Supercomputer list which ranks the world's most powerful machines.
Prof Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, one of the computer scientists who helps to compile the list, said China's claim was legitimate.
"This is all true," he told BBC News. "I was in China last week and talked with the designers, saw the system, and verified the results."
He added: "I would say it's 47% faster than the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's machine, 1.7 Pflops (ORNL system) to 2.5 Pflops (Chinese system)."
Tianhe-1A is unusual in that it unites thousands of Intel processors with thousands of graphics cards made by Nvidia.
The chips inside graphics cards are typically made up of small arithmetical units that can carry out simple sums very quickly. By contrast, Intel chips are typically used to carry out more complicated mathematical operations.
The machine houses its processors in more than 100 fridge-sized cabinets and together these weigh more than 155 tonnes.
Based in China's National Center for Supercomputing in the city of Tianjin, the computer has already started to do work for the local weather service and the National Offshore Oil Corporation.
News Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11644252
Comments
Or do you mean Matsu, Quemoy?
Almost seems a waste really. I mean, think how awesome games would be on such a machine.
Weather can be extremely important. We must not assume only Earth weather as a supercomputer use. With weather and communication satellites in orbit, an outpost and astronauts in space, and sensitive electronics on the Earth, accurately predicting the Sun's weather and solar wind is highly necessary.
EDIT: Probes to Mars (China currently has one on the way) and on Mars (USA has rovers there) also depend on accurate Martian weather prediction. Developing supercomputing models of Earth's weather and perfecting those programs can be at the forefront of developing Martian weather prediction technology. (You would not want to get caught unprepared in a 350mph Martian dust storm)
@ Humanoido
All we need to know is how many Propeller chip boards do you need to beat it? With that many boards Ken should give you a 15% discount. LOL
the latency is bad on a cluster . but for over all throughput there fast .
EG My cluster of 4 computers right now In my dorm room is on gigabit there is still a bottle neck ..
I use POOCH http://daugerresearch.com/pooch/whatsnew.shtml
and I tryed for fun my old N 64 emu a few 2 weeks ago and it was useless ..
Use finite-element analysis by divvying Mars up into 320 bite-sized pieces, one per cog. Most interprocessor communication would be with nearest neighbors - perfect for that particular machine. I could recommend several excellent Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer textbooks to get him started.
There are several interesting idea apps for a Mars model including the one you mentioned. When a dust storm begins, it often travels in super cells along the equatorial belt, more or less, which can be divided into a polar projection of Calculus slices synonymous with cog transition.
Define a cog for each of 360 degrees (guess I need to install 5 more props?). Then global climatic processing can whip around the planet from pole to pole in slices of intense speed to match the super cells keeping up at the weather front and leaving data behind.
I already wrote an extensive computer program developed in ForTran IV to predict weather on Mars (at UCLA - developed for the Association of Lunar & Planetary Observers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California) and it would be interesting to create some adaptations specifically for a clustered machine. We're going to need some math trig functions and will need to review about integer processing (the original is all floating point, though I did create some other programs in integer versions).. Of course it's best to do this when Mars is at a favorable opposition, about 35 to 45 million miles away, so we can confirm and verify actual conditions.
Didn't Dr_Acula say at one time he was setting up a base on Mars?
Mac mini 2.26 GHz Intel ( this computer does 60% of the load anyway) .
Powerbook G4 1.66 GHz PPC
Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz PPC
Powermac G4 DP 450 MHz PPC
In final cut pro I do see a slight speed increse at render . but untill I do a 20 node or more system Is far cheaper to use a Pimped Mac pro or what not then 100$ per node from POOCH and teh Gigibit hub ect ..
BUT considerng how it was Just released for Linux I may When I go to my 4 Y college do a laptop cluster . Get a 32 laptops that have gigabit eatherrnet and there you go . stack on a rack and you can has cluster . with Liunx my cost per Node goes down fast .
PCs are cheap . and plentfull and Linux is free for the most part so I may tinker with it one of thease day s ...
In the case of the China supercomputer, some will say it's all about national prestige, pride, patriotism and showing that China is becoming a super power ahead of other nations. Others expect the real apps likely be military and secret.
I wonder if the USA will scramble now, to make a faster one? It reminds me of the race to the Moon. But from time to time we see an amateur or hobbyist that builds a supercomputer that makes it into one of the top lists.. Sometimes its not ego, race, patriotism, etc. but pure love of the machine and accomplishing the great challenge, the learning experience and wanting to take a powerful engine for a spin. I'm sure race car buffs who experience a lot of horsepower under foot know what we're talking about.
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/fermi_architecture_uk.html