China set to overtake US, Japan in race to petaflop supercomputing

First, a New York Times article, with an excerpt after the link, and then a link to the Xinhua news article up at China's National University of Defense's website, quoted in its entirety.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/technology/28compute.html?_r=1&nl=&emc=a1

excerpt:

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 leadership status in 2004, and has kept it, until now.

http://english.nudt.edu.cn/intrdouce.asp?classid=8&rootclassid=8

Xinhua News: Defense university builds China's fastest supercomputer

    By Xinhua writers Yu Fei, Bai Ruixue and Wang Yushan
 　
    CHANGSHA, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) unveiled Thursday China's fastest supercomputer, which could rival the world's most powerful computing devices.
 The supercomputer, named Tianhe, meaning Milky Way, is theoretically able to do more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop) at peak speed.
    A single-day task for Tianhe might take a mainstream dual-core personal computer 160 years to complete, working non-top -- if it can last that long.
    NUDT president Zhang Yulin said the 155-ton system, with 103 refrigerator-like cabinets lined up on an area of about 1,000 square meters, is expected to process seismic data for oil exploration, conduct bio-medical computing and help design aerospace vehicles.
    China's national high-technology research and development program and the Binhai New Area, a major economic development zonein the northern port city of Tianjin jointly financed Tianhe, which cost at least 600 million yuan (88.24 million U.S. dollars).
    Tianhe's peak performance reaches 1.206 petaflops, and it runs at 563.1 teraflops (1,000 teraflops equals one petaflop) on the Linpack benchmark, which was originally developed by U.S. computer scientist Jack Dongarra and has become an internationally recognized method to measure a supercomputer's real performance in practical use.
    Zhang said the technical data of Tianhe had been submitted to the world Top 500 list, compiled by the University of Mannheim, in Germany, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Tennessee in the United States.
    The next Top 500 supercomputer list will be released in November.
    The performance of Tianhe would have made it the world's fourth most powerful supercomputer in the most recent ranking in June.
    "I was shocked at the milestone breakthrough, which was beyond expectation," said Zhang Yunquan, a researcher with the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and an organizer of the China Top 100 list, which was released at a national conference on high-performance computers Thursday.
    "I previously forecast China's first petaflop computer no earlier than the end of 2010," Zhang said.
    The giant device, a product of 200 computer scientists and two years' work, was housed in the NUDT campus in Changsha, Hunan Province, and would be moved to the National Supercomputing Centerin Tianjin at the end of 2009, said Li Nan, chief coordinator of the program.
    Equipped with 6,144 Intel CPUs and 5,120 AMD GPUs, Tianhe was able to store all 27 million books in the National Library of China four times over, said Zhou Xingming, an academician of CAS and a professor with NUDT.
    "As far as I know, a combination of CPU and GPU is something new used to make a petaflop computer. A GPU, or graphic processing unit, plays a role as an accelerator to make the computer run faster, but reduces its power consumption and cost," Zhou explained.
    "After it's installed in Tianjin, we plan to add hundreds or thousands of China-made CPUs to the machine, and improve its Linpack performance to over 800 teraflops," Zhou said.
    Although its annual electricity bill can be as high as 18 million yuan, Tianhe could have been ranked the world's fifth greenest supercomputer, according to Green500 List in June, compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech aiming to provide a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and serve as a complementary view to the TOP500.
    Of the world's fastest 500 supercomputers, the United States alone has invented 291, including the top 10, Europe has 145 and Asia 49, the June World Top 500 List said.
    In the same list, the Chinese mainland has 20 high-performance computers, with CPUs all supplied by foreign manufacturers.
    China's Dawning Information Industry Company is attempting to build its own supercomputer that overcomes the petaflop barrier by2010.

Tokyo Tech to take lead in supercomputing in Japan

AP - Kyodo News report that the Tokyo Institute of Technology plans to have its new Tsubame 2.0 ('tsubame' is Japanese for the fast-flying bird, the swallow) operational later this year, giving it the lead in speed and processing power in Japan. Japan, however, has taken a backseat in supercomputer progress in recent years in terms of global rankings. Still, Japanese manufacturers NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi remain world class developers of technology for supercomputing. For example, NEC recently announced development of a computer chip that is the world's fastest, surpassing anything Intel has. And Fujitsu plans to increase sales of supercomputers to European institutions and companies.

RIKEN, the supergroup of research institutes in Japan, plans to construct the world's most powerful supercomputer, which would put the country back in the top spot. However, this extravagant undertaking faced suspension due to proposed budget cuts. The project has received enough of a 'lifeline' to keep going, but the 2012 deadline looks questionable.    

See article at link below, excerpt follows link.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9GCI7R85&show_article=1


TOKYO, June 17 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Tokyo Institute of Technology said Wednesday it will commence in November the full-fledged operation of Tsubame 2.0, which would become Japan's fastest supercomputer.

The computer can calculate 2,400 trillion times per second, or 12 times faster than a supercomputer at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which is currently the fastest in the country.

Tsubame 2.0, however, is expected to be overtaken once Riken, a comprehensive research institute for natural sciences, starts operating a next-generation supercomputer in 2012. The Riken supercomputer project had faced suspension under a decision by the waste-cutting panel of the government led by the Democratic Party of Japan but was later allotted a budget to continue development.

China surges past Japan in supercomputing

One of the rankings we watch and cite regularly here at Japan HEO is the top500 list of supercomputers. In the latest rankings (published Nov. last year), Japan failed to place a supercomputer in the top 30. The highest rank for Japan is 31. Meanwhile, China gets one into the top 5. The US still dominates.  Here is the top 50 list. See the link for the entire list.  

http://www.top500.org/list/2009/11/100

Rank    Site    Computer/Year Vendor    Cores    Rmax    Rpeak    Power

1    Oak Ridge National Laboratory
United States    Jaguar - Cray XT5-HE Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz / 2009
Cray Inc.    224162    1759.00    2331.00    6950.60
2    DOE/NNSA/LANL
United States    Roadrunner - BladeCenter QS22/LS21 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz / Opteron DC 1.8 GHz, Voltaire Infiniband / 2009
IBM    122400    1042.00    1375.78    2345.50
3    National Institute for Computational Sciences/University of Tennessee
United States    Kraken XT5 - Cray XT5-HE Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz / 2009
Cray Inc.    98928    831.70    1028.85   
4    Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Germany    JUGENE - Blue Gene/P Solution / 2009
IBM    294912    825.50    1002.70    2268.00
5    National SuperComputer Center in Tianjin/NUDT
China    Tianhe-1 - NUDT TH-1 Cluster, Xeon E5540/E5450, ATI Radeon HD 4870 2, Infiniband / 2009
NUDT    71680    563.10    1206.19   
6    NASA/Ames Research Center/NAS
United States    Pleiades - SGI Altix ICE 8200EX, Xeon QC 3.0 GHz/Nehalem EP 2.93 Ghz / 2009
SGI    56320    544.30    673.26    2348.00
7    DOE/NNSA/LLNL
United States    BlueGene/L - eServer Blue Gene Solution / 2007
IBM    212992    478.20    596.38    2329.60
8    Argonne National Laboratory
United States    Blue Gene/P Solution / 2007
IBM    163840    458.61    557.06    1260.00
9    Texas Advanced Computing Center/Univ. of Texas
United States    Ranger - SunBlade x6420, Opteron QC 2.3 Ghz, Infiniband / 2008
Sun Microsystems    62976    433.20    579.38    2000.00
10    Sandia National Laboratories / National Renewable Energy Laboratory
United States    Red Sky - Sun Blade x6275, Xeon X55xx 2.93 Ghz, Infiniband / 2009
Sun Microsystems    41616    423.90    487.74   
11    DOE/NNSA/LLNL
United States    Dawn - Blue Gene/P Solution / 2009
IBM    147456    415.70    501.35    1134.00
12    Moscow State University - Research Computing Center
Russia    Lomonosov - T-Platforms T-Blade2, Xeon 5570 2.93 GHz, Infiniband QDR / 2009
T-Platforms    35360    350.10    414.42   
13    Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Germany    JUROPA - Sun Constellation, NovaScale R422-E2, Intel Xeon X5570, 2.93 GHz, Sun M9/Mellanox QDR Infiniband/Partec Parastation / 2009
Bull SA    26304    274.80    308.28    1549.00
14    KISTI Supercomputing Center
Korea, South    TachyonII - Sun Blade x6048, X6275, IB QDR M9 switch, Sun HPC stack Linux edition / 2009
Sun Microsystems    26232    274.80    307.44    1275.96
15    NERSC/LBNL
United States    Franklin - Cray XT4 QuadCore 2.3 GHz / 2008
Cray Inc.    38642    266.30    355.51    1150.00
16    Oak Ridge National Laboratory
United States    Jaguar - Cray XT4 QuadCore 2.1 GHz / 2008
Cray Inc.    30976    205.00    260.20    1580.71
17    Sandia National Laboratories
United States    Sandia/Cray Red Storm - Cray XT3/XT4 / 2009
Cray Inc.    38208    204.20    284.00    2506.00
18    King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Saudia Arabia    Shaheen - Blue Gene/P Solution / 2009
IBM    65536    190.90    222.82    504.00
19    Shanghai Supercomputer Center
China    Magic Cube - Dawning 5000A, QC Opteron 1.9 Ghz, Infiniband, Windows HPC 2008 / 2008
Dawning    30720    180.60    233.47   
20    University of Edinburgh
United Kingdom    HECToR - Cray XT4, 2.3 GHz / 2009
Cray Inc.    22656    174.08    208.44   
21    Swiss Scientific Computing Center (CSCS)
Switzerland    Monte Rosa - Cray XT5 SixCore 2.4 GHz / 2009
Cray Inc.    22032    168.70    211.51    713.00
22    SciNet/University of Toronto
Canada    GPC - iDataPlex, Xeon E55xx QC 2.53 GHz, GigE / 2009
IBM    30240    168.60    306.03    869.40
23    Government
United States    Cray XT5 QC 2.4 GHz / 2009
Cray Inc.    20960    165.60    201.22   
24    ERDC DSRC
United States    SGI Altix ICR 8200 Enh. LX, Xeon X5560 2.8Ghz / 2009
SGI    15360    160.20    172.03    774.50
25    New Mexico Computing Applications Center (NMCAC)
United States    Encanto - SGI Altix ICE 8200, Xeon quad core 3.0 GHz / 2007
SGI    14336    133.20    172.03    861.63
26    Computational Research Laboratories, TATA SONS
India    EKA - Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 3GHz, Infiniband / 2008
Hewlett-Packard    14384    132.80    172.61    786.00
27    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States    Juno - Appro XtremeServer 1143H, Opteron QC 2.2Ghz, Infiniband / 2008
Appro International    18224    131.60    162.20   
28    Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif - Centre Informatique National de l'Enseignement Superieur (GENCI-CINES)
France    Jade - SGI Altix ICE 8200EX, Xeon quad core 3.0 GHz / 2008
SGI    12288    128.40    146.74    608.18
29    DOE/NNSA/LANL
United States    Cerrillos - BladeCenter QS22/LS21 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz / Opteron DC 1.8 GHz, Infiniband / 2009
IBM    14400    126.50    161.86    276.00
30    National Institute for Computational Sciences/University of Tennessee
United States    Athena - Cray XT4 QuadCore 2.3 GHz / 2008
Cray Inc.    17956    125.13    165.20    888.82
31    Japan Agency for Marine -Earth Science and Technology
Japan    Earth Simulator - SX-9/E/1280M160 / 2009
NEC    1280    122.40    131.07   
32    IDRIS
France    Blue Gene/P Solution / 2008
IBM    40960    119.31    139.26    315.00
33    ECMWF
United Kingdom    Power 575, p6 4.7 GHz, Infiniband / 2008
IBM    8320    115.90    156.42    1329.70
34    ECMWF
United Kingdom    Power 575, p6 4.7 GHz, Infiniband / 2009
IBM    8320    115.90    156.42    1329.70
35    DKRZ - Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum
Germany    Power 575, p6 4.7 GHz, Infiniband / 2008
IBM    8064    115.90    151.60    1288.69
36    JAXA
Japan    Fujitsu FX1, Quadcore SPARC64 VII 2.52 GHz, Infiniband DDR / 2009
Fujitsu    12032    110.60    121.28   
37    US Army Research Laboratory (ARL)
United States    SGI Altix ICE 8200 Enhanced LX, Xeon Nehalem quad core 2.8 GHz / 2009
SGI    10752    109.30    120.42    475.00
38    Joint Supercomputer Center
Russia    MVS-100K - Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c/BL2x220, Xeon 54xx 3 Ghz, Infiniband / 2009
Hewlett-Packard    11680    107.45    140.16   
39    HLRN at Universitaet Hannover / RRZN
Germany    SGI Altix ICE 8200EX, Xeon QC E5472 3.0 GHz/X5570 2.93 GHz / 2009
SGI    10240    107.10    120.73   
40    HLRN at ZIB/Konrad Zuse-Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik
Germany    SGI Altix ICE 8200EX, Xeon QC E5472 3.0 GHz/X5570 2.93 GHz / 2009
SGI    10240    107.10    120.73   
41    Total Exploration Production
France    SGI Altix ICE 8200EX, Xeon quad core 3.0 GHz / 2008
SGI    10240    106.10    122.88    442.00
42    Government Agency
Sweden    Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c, Xeon 53xx 2.66GHz, Infiniband / 2007
Hewlett-Packard    13728    102.80    146.43   
43    Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Science
China    DeepComp 7000, HS21/x3950 Cluster, Xeon QC HT 3 GHz/2.93 GHz, Infiniband / 2008
Lenovo    12216    102.80    145.97   
44    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
United States    Hera - Appro Xtreme-X3 Server - Quad Opteron Quad Core 2.3 GHz, Infiniband / 2009
Appro International    13552    102.20    127.20   
45    Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo
Japan    T2K Open Supercomputer (Todai Combined Cluster) - Hitachi opteron QC 2.3 GHz Myrinet 10G / 2009
Hitachi    15104    101.74    138.96    831.50
46    Max-Planck-Gesellschaft MPI/IPP
Germany    VIP - Power 575, p6 4.7 GHz, Infiniband / 2009
IBM    6848    98.42    128.74    1095.00
47    Institute of Physical and Chemical Res. (RIKEN)
Japan    RIKEN Intergrated Cluster of Clusters, Xeon X5570 2.93GHz, Infiniband DDR / 2009
Fujitsu    9048    97.94    106.04   
48    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
United States    Chinook - Cluster Platform 4000 DL185G5, Opteron QC 2.2 GHz, Infiniband DDR / 2008
Hewlett-Packard    18176    97.07    159.95   
49    EDF R&D
France    Frontier2 BG/L - Blue Gene/P Solution / 2008
IBM    32768    95.45    111.41    252.00
50    IT Service Provider
Germany    Cluster Platform 3000 BL2x220, E54xx 3.0 Ghz, Infiniband / 2009
Hewlett-Packard    10240    94.74    122.88