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China builds World's fatest computer
By siliconindia
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Friday, 29 October 2010, 20:33 IST
Beijing:Showing its strength to the world, China has develpoped fastest supercomputer.A Chinese scientific research center has built the fastest supercomputer ever made, replacing the United States as maker of the swiftest machine.
The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer, which is at a national laboratory in Tennessee, as measured by the standard test used to gauge how well the systems handle mathematical calculations, said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings.
Officials from the Chinese research center, the National University of Defense Technology, are expected to reveal the computer's performance on Thursday at a conference in Beijing. The center says it is "under the dual supervision of the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Education."
The race to build the fastest supercomputer has become a source of national pride as these machines are valued for their ability to solve problems critical to national interests in areas like defense, energy, finance and science. Supercomputing technology also finds its way into mainstream business; oil and gas companies use it to find reservoirs and Wall Street traders use it for superquick automated trades. Procter & Gamble even uses supercomputers to make sure that Pringles go into cans without breaking.
Over the last decade, the Chinese have steadily inched up in the rankings of supercomputers. Tianhe-1A stands as the culmination of billions of dollars in investment and scientific development, as China has gone from a computing afterthought to a world technology superpower.
"What is scary about this is that the US dominance in high-performance computing is at risk," said Wu-chun Feng, a supercomputing expert and professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "One could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future."
Modern supercomputers are built by combining thousands of small computer servers and using software to turn them into a single entity. In that sense, any organization with enough money and expertise can buy what amount to off-the-shelf components and create a fast machine.
The Chinese system follows that model by linking thousands upon thousands of chips made by the American companies Intel and Nvidia. But the secret sauce behind the system -- and the technological achievement -- is the interconnect, or networking technology, developed by Chinese researchers that shuttles data back and forth across the smaller computers at breakneck rates, Mr Dongarra said.
"That technology was built by them," Mr Dongarra said. "They are taking supercomputing very seriously and making a deep commitment."
The Chinese interconnect can handle data at about twice the speed of a common interconnect called InfiniBand used in many supercomputers.
For decades, the United States has developed most of the underlying technology that goes into the massive supercomputers and has built the largest, fastest machines at research laboratories and universities. Some of the top systems simulate the effects of nuclear weapons, while others predict the weather and aid in energy research.
In 2002, the United States lost its crown as supercomputing kingpin for the first time in stunning fashion when Japan unveiled a machine with more horsepower than the top 20 American computers combined. The United States government responded in kind, forming groups to plot a comeback and pouring money into supercomputing projects. The United States regained its