Count hours, 340 years equivalent to national 1.3 billion people
“China speed” once again shocked the world: on November 14, the international authority in the world on its website the TOP500 organization released its supercomputers in the world top 500 list, independently developed in China “Tianhe first” second-phase systems (TH-1A) leapt to the top spot as the world’s fastest computational speed of supercomputers.
“Tianhe first” speed fast enough? What is it used? “China speed” world can keep how long? This article a look for you.
On November 16, located in the Tianjin Binhai New area of the second floor of the National Center for Supercomputing in Tianjin, reporters saw the world champion “Tianhe first”: 140 looks like black refrigerator cabinets, 700 square metres of the engine room neatly into 13 rows.
“Super computer known as the Mount Everest on the computer, represents a state machine design, manufacture and application of the highest level. “” Tianhe first “project director Li Nan researcher told reporters that TOP500 rankings currently Germany Mannheim University United States Tennessee universities, United States Scientific Computing Center on energy research (NERSC) of, Lawrence Berkeley nation laboratory jointly organized, have become measured national Supercomputing level most important reference basis.
In the TOP500 list, China occupied 2 seats in the top ten, second only to United States; in the top 500, we have 41 seats, the overall share of 8.2%, came in second. And in November 2009 TOP500 ranking, only 21 units in China, the overall share of 4.2%, was ranked fifth. “This shows that the supercomputer development level in China at a faster rate, overall catch up. “Li Nan said excitedly.
Features
Speed world, energy efficiency the world’s leading
“Tianhe first” speed fast enough?
Li Nan told reporters, “Tianhe first” peak speed of 4700 trillion times per second. “Milky way first,” operation 1 hour, equivalent to 1.3 billion people at the same time calculations at least 340 years; “Tianhe first” operation 1 day or 1 dual-core high-end desktop computer operations more than 620 years.
“Tianhe first” storage capacity are staggering: their 2PB storage capacity, which is 2000 trillion bytes. 1 average Chinese character is 2 bytes, “Tianhe first” online storage 1000 trillion characters, equivalent to store books 1 billion volumes of 1 million words.
“The ‘ milky way first ‘ is a peer-to-green pioneer. “Li Nan, said the total value is the current power consumption and energy efficiency measures is important indicator of advanced super computer, the former refers to super computer maximum power consumption values when working at full capacity, which means” per watt can be ‘ how many million double-precision floating point operations per second ‘ “(MFlops/W), which is a measure of supercomputer is greener, low carbon targets.
According to his introduction, “Tianhe first” 4.04 megawatts total power consumption running at full capacity, power consumption per hour of 4,040, working at full capacity 24 hours power consumption closer to 100,000. “This figure sounds impressive, but in fact, the ‘ milky way first ‘ is a supercomputer of energy-saving green. “Li Nan said, after measurement, its energy value is 635.15MFlops/W, which is 635.15 million floating point operations per second per watt can be realized. The value of energy efficiency, only less than energy efficiency ranking of the world’s first “IBM blue gene”.
“In addition, the ‘ milky way first ‘ also has the characteristics of high security. “” Tianhe first “Director designer Lu Yutong researcher introduced, which are in a National University of Defense technology developed independently of the kylin operating system is the only adopted a national Ministry of public security the B2 level (highest level)-certified operating system. “The user using the kylin operating system, you can customize your private work spaces, like hiring a bank safety deposit box, keys and keys on the user’s hand, other users or system administrators can access. And Kirin the kernel of the operating system and interface is defined and developed on our own, hackers find it hard to understand and master. “Lu Yutong said with a smile.
Application
Calculation of crack, boosting strategy industry
“Super computer is a product of the requirements. “Li Nan said that economic, science and technology, national defense, and other areas there are a series of complex, large-scale problems need solving, scientists efforts over a long time, for these issues to establish a more sophisticated physics model, by the corresponding calculation method, can the solution on your computer. These computational problems, most complex and large group is called “challenging computing problems”, must rely on fast operation speed of the bulk of mainframe computers, to be completed within the valid time.
According to Li Nan introduction, super computer to strong impetus to improving the capacity of national science and technology innovation. Experimental and theoretical research, calculation, three means is commonly used for scientific research, supercomputer to help scientists better understand the natural world, discover scientific laws, thereby promoting progress in science and technology. For example, the 2007 winner of the Nobel Prize in physics bide·gelinbeigeer, is the Germany You Lixi Research Center scientists. He with the help of the Centre’s super computer equipment, discovered the “giant magnetoresistance” effect, makes it possible to small large hard drives.
Second, the supercomputer capable of effectively promoting economic and social development. In addition to the new energy, new materials, bio-pharmaceutical, energy saving and environmental protection and other strategic emerging industry, weather forecasting, climate predictions, seismic monitoring, such as social security, more and more dependent on supercomputing strong.
National Super is Deputy Director of the Tianjin Center Zhu Xiaoqian researcher, told reporters that at present “Tianhe first” has been successfully applied to oil exploration, high-end equipment, biomedicine, animation design, new energy, new materials, engineering analysis and simulation, weather forecasting, and other areas, has for more than 20 more units to provide a high-performance computing services. Among them, University Institute of software, “Tianhe first” global full implicit numerical simulation of shallow water waves in the atmosphere and the Earth’s outer core study on thermal flow numerical simulation of two major scientific challenges. Their evaluation are: “Tianhe first” reliable, use friendly interface, network system especially developed high bandwidth, latency low, “IBM blue gene” compared favourably.
Prospect
A historic breakthrough, the overall gap in
“High-end information technology and industry in China is still in the development process, the ‘ milky way first ‘ this win is a historic breakthrough, was not easy. “Li Nan said it a pioneer in the international integration of GPU and CPU efficient parallel computing architecture, broke the world’s advanced level of high speed interconnect communication technology. This once again proves that as long as we identify the breakthrough point, stick to independent innovation, can be developed with a leading product, “made in China” to “made in China”.
“Of course, the achievements of the us to have a rational judgment, not complacency. “” Tianhe first “Deputy General Designer Hu Qingfeng researcher said, from the history of the TOP500 ranking view, United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and is a traditional supercomputer development and application of power, United States, by virtue of its long-term technology accumulation, with absolute dominance. “In this ranking, United States account for 274 seats, still has the absolute advantage.”
He pointed out that, with developed countries especially the United States than in core General chips and software infrastructure for electronic devices, high end, large industrial application software, and there is a significant gap in varying degrees dependent on foreign imports. Take the “milky way first”, was only partly by our own development of fly-1000 central processing unit.
Hu Qingfeng said: “the ‘ milky way first ‘ application and work has just started, the depth and breadth of application is not enough. Giving full play to the system aspects of parallel computing, optimization system for application efficiency, also faces many challenges, catch up with the world advanced level is a long way to go. ”
“Milky way first,” the world’s first location of how sustainable? Li Nan said, each other and better compete are likely to become a future world super computer power business as usual. For example, he said, 2002 Japan to “Earth Simulator” beyond the United States, ranking the TOP500 topped, but the United States in 2004, that is, once again exceed, regain its dominance. According to the New York Times reported that the current United States has planned to manufacture faster supercomputer. Also Japan also are developing expected millions of times k super computer system.
“The country has launched ‘ nuclear Takamoto ‘ major national special emphasis, such as research, National Defense University of science and technology is an active participant and one of the core development team. “Li Nan said,” we have the ability and is confident that, together with domestic counterparts, and continue to narrow the gap with the developed countries, caught up and overtaken them as soon as possible. ”
“Further reading”
“Tianhe first” development process
“Tianhe first” is in the national 863 plan of major project “petaflops of high performance computer systems” and the Tianjin Binhai New area with the support of, National Defense University of science and technology development. From 2005 start of development work, according to the implementation of the project in two phases. One-stage system in September 2009, the successful development of peak speeds of 1206 trillion double precision floating point operations per second (TFlops), continuous speed is 563.1TFlops (LINPACK measurement values), is China’s first petaflops system, participation in the November 2009 ranking of supercomputers in the world TOP 500, was ranked first in Asia, fifth in the world. Stage ⅱ system in national Supercomputing Center of Tianjin in August 2010 upgrade is complete realized from Asia to major world first, made independently developed the super computer integrated technology into leading a historic breakthrough.
November 2010 top ten supercomputers in the world (operation speed for sustained speed)
1 China Tianhe first (TH-1A), 2566 trillion times per second
2 United States Cray Jaguar, 1759 trillion times per second
3 China shuguang Nebula, 1271 trillion times per second
4 Japan NEC/HP TSUBAME, 1192 trillion times per second
5 United States Cray Hopper, 1054 trillion times per second
6 France BULL Tera-100, 1050 trillion times per second
7 United States IBM Roadrunner, 1042 trillion times per second
8 United States Cray KrakenXT5, 831.7 trillion times per second
9 United States IBM JUGENE, 825.5 trillion times per second
10 United States Cray CieloXE6, 816.6 trillion times per second
Super computer
Is the “fastest computational speed of large-capacity mainframe computers in the current era”. Definition of supercomputer has significant characteristics of the times, and was closely related to the level of computer technology and application development. Peak speed as an example, before and after 2000, trillions, 10 trillion times the double precision floating point operations per second is the sign of supercomputers, and before and after 2009, baiwanyi more than once has become the new logo of supercomputers. Currently, petaflops supercomputer to new heights.
Super Computing Center
Currently world Shang has quadrillion times calculation ability of Supercomputing Center and national laboratory total 6 home, which United States 3 home (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and United States energy research Science Computing Center, and Los Republika Allah Mo Republika national laboratory), and China 1 home (national Supercomputing Tianjin Center), and Japan 1 home (Tokyo Technology Institute), and France 1 home (France Atomic Energy Committee), and Germany 1 home (EU You Lixi Research Center). (From: people’s network-people’s daily)