New Chinese Super-Computer is the fastest in the world - 93 Petaflops - made without US chips

[brune67]

I looked and didn't see this posted so here we go.

 

Spoiler

A Chinese supercomputer built using domestic chip technology has been declared the world's fastest. The news highlights China's recent advances in the creation of such systems, as well the country's waning reliance on US semiconductor technology.

THE TAIHULIGHT IS CAPABLE OF 93 PETAFLOPS

 

The Sunway TaihuLight takes the top spot from previous record-holder Tianhe-2 (also located in China), and more than triples the latter's speed. The new number one is capable of performing some 93 quadrillion calculations per second (otherwise known as petaflops) and is roughly five times more powerful than the speediest US system, which is now ranked third worldwide.

The TaihuLight is comprised of some 41,000 chips, each with 260 processor cores. This makes for a total of 10.65 million cores, compared to the 560,000 cores in America's top machine. In terms of memory, it's relatively light on its feet, with just 1.3 petabytes used for the entire machine. (By comparison, the much less powerful 10-petaflop K supercomputer uses 1.4 petabytes of RAM.) This means it's unusually energy efficient, drawing just 15.3 megawatts of power — less than the 17.8 megawatts used by the 33-petaflop Tianhe-2.

More significantly than its specs, though, is the fact that the TaihuLight is built from Chinese semiconductors. "It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement system used to rank the world's supercomputers, told Bloomberg. "This is a system that has Chinese processors."

THE US HAS BANNED THE EXPORT OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE CHIPS TO CHINA

The previous fastest supercomputer, China's Tianhe-2, was built using US-made Intel processors. There were plans to upgrade the Tianhe-2's performance last year, but in April 2015 the US government placed an export ban on all high-performance computing chips to China. The Department of Commerce said that exporting such technology was "acting contrary" to American national security or foreign interests, and suggested that an earlier Chinese supercomputer — the Tianhe-1A — had been "used in nuclear explosive activities."

 

Supercomputers are thought by both the US and China to be integral for national security and scientific research. Such systems are used for a variety of tasks, including civilian work like climate forecasting and product design. However, they're also useful for more high-stakes research, including cybersecurity and nuclear weaponry. According to its creators, the TaihuLight will be used in the fields of manufacturing, life science, and earth system modeling.

China's investment in high-performance chips and supercomputers in recent years has been significant and effective. In 2001, there were no Chinese supercomputers in the world's top 500 ranking. Now, there are 167 — more than the US, which has 165 entries. The development of TaihuLight was funded under the so-called "863 program," a government project aimed at ending reliance on foreign technology.

 

Taken from http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/20/11975356/chinese-supercomputer-worlds-fastes-taihulight

 

Thoughts? I did not realize that the US put a ban on High-performance chips going to china, but I am somehow unsurprised that china does have the most powerful computer.

[Nena Trinity]

It uses AMD semi-custom parts most likely...

[brune67]

1 hour ago, Nena360 said:

It uses AMD semi-custom parts most likely...

Quote

More significantly than its specs, though, is the fact that the TaihuLight is built from Chinese semiconductors. "It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," 

did you......read the article?.......

[Citadelen]

4 minutes ago, brune67 said:

did you......read the article?.......

You know AMD can and has recently started licencing their designs to a Chinese Consortium that designed their chips off of AMD's technology.

[DXMember]

but, why did they make the AMD deal then??

and either way this is way too fast for AMD to be involved with that deal they made just a month ago

[brune67]

1 hour ago, Citadelen said:

You know AMD can and has recently started licencing their designs to a Chinese Consortium that designed their chips off of AMD's technology.

No I did not.

 

1 hour ago, DXMember said:

but, why did they make the AMD deal then??

and either way this is way too fast for AMD to be involved with that deal they made just a month ago

And yes it does seem too fast

[spartaman64]

8 minutes ago, DXMember said:

but, why did they make the AMD deal then??

and either way this is way too fast for AMD to be involved with that deal they made just a month ago

you do know you can just put in like a billion amd chips even if they are slow when it comes to supercomputers

[DXMember]

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

you do know you can just put in like a billion amd chips even if they are slow when it comes to supercomputer

I'm not saying you can't make supercomputers out of AMD

I'm saying that China-AMD deal was made just a month ago, there is no way they can deploy a 93PFLOPS machine in a month,

it's not even enough of a timeframe for AMD to serve as a consultant on this project...

[brune67]

@Citadelen @Nena360 @spartaman64 According to PC world: 

Quote

The Sunway TaihuLight at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, was ranked as the world's fastest supercomputer on a Top500 list published on Monday. It runs on a homegrown ShenWei processor and is capable of 93 petaflops (million billion floating point operations per second) of sustained performance. Its peak performance can reach 125.4 petaflops.

 ShenWei is owned by  Jiāngnán Computing Lab  . AMD licensed to  Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co . 2 separate companies.

[spartaman64]

2 minutes ago, DXMember said:

I'm not saying you can't make supercomputers out of AMD

I'm saying that China-AMD deal was made just a month ago, there is no way they can deploy a 93PFLOPS machine in a month,

it's not even enough of a timeframe for AMD to serve as a consultant on this project...

oh srry misread you mean too fast as in the time period

[alamox]

it's probably AMD chips, china doesnt have anything else other than the semi-custom deal they have with AMD.

[BuckGup]

Zen confirmed?

[DXMember]

Quote

The TaihuLight is comprised of some 41,000 chips, each with 260 processor cores. This makes for a total of 10.65 million cores

going for numbers

the chinese way

[brune67]

1 hour ago, alamox said:

it's probably AMD chips, china doesnt have anything else other than the semi-custom deal they have with AMD.

We literally just went over this. The China - AMD deal was made with  Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. The company who developed the ShenWei processors is  Jiāngnán Computing Lab.that's two different companies, They have nothing to do with each other.

[Yog]

1 hour ago, brune67 said:

did you......read the article?.......

Yeah, because the Chinese government never lies and their designs are always original and never stolen. I'm not saying they're lying in this instance, I have no idea about the state of Chinese semiconductor technology, but they have a pretty solid track record of stealing technologies and claiming it's their own so I would not be surprised of that's what they did here.

[VerticalDiscussions]

So, it can power 15,300 houses... where can i buy one?

[brune67]

1 hour ago, Yog said:

Yeah, because the Chinese government never lies and their designs are always original and never stolen. I'm not saying they're lying in this instance, I have no idea about the state of Chinese semiconductor technology, but they have a pretty solid track record of stealing technologies and claiming it's their own so I would not be surprised of that's what they did here.

Maybe. I'm surprised that the US hasn't put in a little more effort for a supercomputer that closes the field a little bit, I mean sure, the have the #3 spot but

Quote

The new number one is capable of performing some 93 quadrillion calculations per second (otherwise known as petaflops) and is roughly five times more powerful than the speediest US system, which is now ranked third worldwide. The TaihuLight is comprised of some 41,000 chips, each with 260 processor cores. This makes for a total of 10.65 million cores, compared to the 560,000 cores in America's top machine.

10.65 Million vs 560K....... that's a big gap.

 

Quote

The development of TaihuLight was funded under the so-called "863 program," a government project aimed at ending reliance on foreign technology.

Well they are one step closer.

 

1 hour ago, VerticalDiscussions said:

So, it can power 15,300 houses... where can i buy one?

I don't think they are up for sale *sarcasm*

[vanished]

I'm not surprised by this - I read an article a few years ago talking about how China was working on their own processors so they wouldn't have to be dependent on the US (smart - now if only the US did the same with everything China makes for them ).  This seems like the realization of what they were working on.

[Yog]

2 minutes ago, brune67 said:

Maybe. I'm surprised that the US hasn't put in a little more effort for a supercomputer that closes the field a little bit, I mean sure, the have the #3 spot but

From what I've heard supercomputers are losing usefulness and being replaced with distributed computing. I don't know how true that is since I'm not in a field that would utilize them but if it is true china building the biggest supercomputer is like Ford building the Excursion (the biggest SUV that was discontinued only after a few years), a bit late to the game and now you'll just have people complaining about your carbon footprint. Which isn't to say supercomputers would become useless, just the usefulness of continuously building the biggest and best is diminished.

[vanished]

3 minutes ago, Yog said:

From what I've heard supercomputers are losing usefulness and being replaced with distributed computing. I don't know how true that is since I'm not in a field that would utilize them but if it is true china building the biggest supercomputer is like Ford building the Excursion (the biggest SUV that was discontinued only after a few years), a bit late to the game and now you'll just have people complaining about your carbon footprint. Which isn't to say supercomputers would become useless, just the usefulness of continuously building the biggest and best is diminished.

Perhaps it can be designed in an eco-friendly way; all the heat from the CPUs should be channeled into a central water holding tank and used to generate steam which powers the computer  

[brune67]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Perhaps it can be designed in an eco-friendly way; all the heat from the CPUs should be channeled into a central water holding tank and used to generate steam which powers the computer  

and I'd like to see that.

[RagnarokDel]

Inb4 it's used to mine bitcoin

[Doobeedoo]

So much computing power for Terminators

[Coaxialgamer]

But can it run crysis ?

please don't kill me ...

 

anyway , this is quite interesting . I'm rather surprised they managed to pull off such an energy efficient design.

 

[durpflip]

6 hours ago, Yog said:

Yeah, because the Chinese government never lies and their designs are always original and never stolen. I'm not saying they're lying in this instance, I have no idea about the state of Chinese semiconductor technology, but they have a pretty solid track record of stealing technologies and claiming it's their own so I would not be surprised of that's what they did here.

china pretty much denies any allegation of copyright infringement in their stuff even if the allegation is correct. cars have a serious problem with this (and some of you might recall a top gear episode where jeremy clarkson explains that BMW sued a hong-kong based company for blatantly ripping off the X5 and the chinese government said there was no resemblance). if they can get away with copying land rovers

 

Spoiler

and ripping off exiges/elises

 

Spoiler

i'm pretty sure they could get away with stealing AMD blueprints. hell,probably even stealing intel blueprints...