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China: This is a bit of a surprise
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    China has made its first supercomputer based on Chinese microprocessor chips, an advance that surprised high-performance computing specialists in the United States.
    The Sunway system, which can perform about 1,000 trillion calculations per second — a petaflop — will probably rank among the 20 fastest computers in the world. More significantly, it is composed of 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 microprocessors, designed at a Chinese computer institute and manufactured in Shanghai.
    “This is a bit of a surprise,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee and a leader of the Top500 project, a list of the world’s fastest computers.
    Last fall, another Chinese-based supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, created an international sensation when it was briefly ranked as the world’s fastest, before it was displaced in the spring by a rival Japanese machine, the K Computer, designed by Fujitsu. But the Tianhe was built from processor chips made by American companies, Intel and Nvidia, though its internal switching system was designed by Chinese engineers. Similarly, the K computer was based on Sparc chips, originally designed at Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley.
    The ShenWei microprocessor appears to be based on some of the same design principles that are favored by Intel’s most advanced microprocessors, according to several supercomputer experts in the United States.
    But there is disagreement over whether the machine’s cooling technology is appropriate for designs that will be required by the exaflop-class supercomputers of the future.
    Photos of the new Sunway supercomputer reveal an elaborate water-cooling system that may be a significant advance in the design of the very fastest machines. “Getting this cooling technology correct is very, very difficult,” said Steven Wallach, chief scientist at Convey Computer, a Richardson, Tex., supercomputer firm. “This tells me that this is a serious design. This cooling technology could scale to exaflop. They are in the hunt to win.”


    Via: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/world/asia/china-unveils-supercomputer-based-on-its-own-microprocessor-chips.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
  • 12 Replies sorted by
  • MihuelMihuel
    It's no surprise. It was predictable. I think that in a few years (sooner than later), China will become a leader in many areas.
  • bitcrusherbitcrusher
    Its interesting that we are reaching a point in processors were cooling is starting to become the main design issue.
  • Ian_TIan_T
    Go China!!
  • LPowellLPowell
    @bitcrusher
    Yep, the portable cooling system is what gives the human brain one of its most significant advantages.
  • stoneystoney
    I guess they must have been sucking brains from Japan and Korea.
  • brianlucebrianluce
    I wonder who China stole the technology from. Probably USA.
  • nomadnomad
    Don't you think the they have some creativity of their own?

    Sure, many students studied abroad (I have a few excellent students from China), but we are all standing on the shoulders of former generations (or we'd still hit each other with stone axes).

    Japan was said to be copying only in the fifties. Look where they got!
  • brianlucebrianluce
    @nomad
    The Chinese are the first to admit they lack creativity. They're great at pirating though.
    Japanese frankly aren't a lot better. They're good at perfecting Western technology.

    There are great centers however of Asian creativity, they have names like San Francisco and London.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev
    >I wonder who China stole the technology from. Probably USA.

    Brian, it is getting old :-)
  • MimirsanMimirsan
    Its not just getting old...its bloody racist.
    China lacks creativity? Nice.
  • MihuelMihuel
    @brianluce
    >The Chinese are the first to admit they lack creativity
    ...and Africans are only suitable for sports and work on cotton plantations, Slavs are not able to create their own country without the help of Germanic, Irish people are drunks, Arabs are dirty .... Only the Anglo-Saxons and Teutons are the outstanding representatives of the human race. Invented the concentration camps, gas chambers, colonialism, slavery ....

    P.S. And Copernicus was a woman .. :-)
  • svartsvart
    I work for a corporation who has an engineering design office in China. The people are hard workers and often go to greater lengths than some of the western workers, but I can also say without any implied "racism" or whatever, that they do lack a certain degree of creativity. They are great at certain tasks but often have questions about things that are "out of the ordinary". I don't think it's a lack of understanding, I think it's a lack of even knowing that something can be done differently than they've been taught. I think that is changing but their engineering culture has always been one of academics only and "out of the box" thinkers are punished, not welcomed.

    I also think that it's a side-effect of their culture of hierarchy. They won't take risks without those above them telling them to, partly because it's frowned upon and partly because they are deathly afraid of losing their jobs in case something adverse were to happen. Both of these things I've heard first hand from the people that live there, so I don't consider it hearsay or "racism" at all, but a fact of life in a culture that is different than my own.

    In any case, I've been watching their engineering system for 10 years now. They are definitely going to be a force to reckon with in the next 5-10 years. However, like any budding industry, they are being forced to pay higher wages to the best students to lure them to the best jobs. 10 years ago you could get 5 PhD engineers for 1 Bachelor here. Now it's more like 2 MS for 1BS here. In the next 5-10 years they'll be getting paid roughly the same as we do for the same education.
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