Tianhe-2 fuels China's sci-tech progress

[Hypersonicmissiles]

GUANGZHOU - China's Tianhe-2, the world's fastest supercomputer, is boosting science and technological development at home and abroad.

Tianhe-2 retained its top spot for the third consecutive time on the biannual Top500 list for supercomputers on Monday, according to the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, in south China's Guangdong Province.

"It represents a significant change from 'Made in China' to made with China's wisdom," said Yuan Xuefeng, director with the center.

Tianhe-2 was developed by the National University of Defense Technology and runs at 33.86 petaflops per second.

Its computing capacity in one hour equals that of the 1.3 billion people in China calculating on calculators for 1,000 years.

The supercomputer has been in commercial operation since April.

"It is driving multiple industries and sci-tech projects with secure high-speed development. It can handle high levels of analyzing, computing and processing," said Yuan.

It completed high-precision calculations of the external flow field around the C919, China's first home-made large passenger jet, in only six days. Without the supercomputer it would have taken about two years.

In the medical field, Tianhe-2 can create three-dimensional reconstructions of aortic aneurysms.

"That means doctors can gain a comprehensive understanding of aneurysms before operating. It can help evaluate and reduce medical risks," said Yuan.

The supercomputer has been used in the country's priority projects, covering energy, bioscience, pollution regulation and high-speed rail design.

It is also being used by foreign institutions. The National Supercomputer Center is working the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States on the research of anti-HIV drugs.

Tianhe-2 will undergo a systems upgrade in July, said Yuan.

 

[BoQ77]

Which microprocessor that computer going to use ?

 

[BoQ77]

June 24, 2014

K computer grabs top spot in Graph 500 "Big Data" supercomputer ranking
A collaboration from RIKEN, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and University College Dublin won top place in the June 2014 Graph 500 supercomputer ranking using the K computer, which is located in Kobe, Japan. The results were announced on June 23 at the international conference on high-performance computing (ISC14) being held in Leipzig, Germany.

The Graph 500 ranking is a relatively new benchmark, first issued in 2010, which seeks to gauge the ability of supercomputers on data-intensive loads rather than simple speed, with the goal of improving computing involving complex data problems in five key areas: cybersecurity, medical informatics, data enrichment, social networks, and symbolic networks.

While the TOP500 ranking measures the ability of a computer to solve a system of linear equations with the LINPACK benchmark, in the Graph500 the speed of a breadth-first graph search, measured by number of traversed edges per second (TEPS) is used, with "edges" indicating the connection between two data points. Breadth-first searches, which are commonly used for Big Data applications, involve a substantially larger degree of irregular computations than the LINPACK benchmark.

To conduct the benchmark measurement, Koji Ueno of Tokyo Institute of Technology and RIKEN, along with colleagues, used 65,536 of the K computer’s 88,128 compute nodes, and was able to solve a breadth-first search of an extremely large graph of 1 trillion nodes and 16 trillion edges in 0.98 second. With this achievement it gained the top place with a score of 17,977 gigaTEPS. The K computer was trailed by Sequoia at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the USA, with a score of 16,599 gigaTEPS, and Mira at the Argonne National Laboratory in the USA, with a score of 14,328.

The K computer’s triumph under the new ranking shows that it excels not only at regular parallel computing but also at graph analysis, which relies heavily on irregular computations, and demonstrates the flexibility of K in application to a wide range of applications. According to Kimihiko Hirao, Director of the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, "It is also testimony to the talent of the team’s high software development skills which helped them to make optimum use of the K’s powerful hardware."

"We are delighted," he adds, "to have won this prize, as it demonstrates the K computer’s usefulness for tackling complex phenomenon taking place in the real world, which has become increasingly key for computers in recent years."

Two research projects funded by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) CREST programs contributed to this achievement: "Advanced Computing and Optimization Infrastructure for Extremely Large-Scale Graphs on Post Peta-Scale Supercomputers" (PI: Prof. Katsuki Fujisawa of Kyushu University and Co-PI: Prof. Toyotaro Suzumura of University College Dublin), which is a project in the research area of Development of System Software Technologies for Post-Peta Scale High Performance Computing (Research Supervisor: Prof. Akinori Yonezawa of RIKEN), and "EBD: Extreme Big Data - Convergence of Big Data and HPC for Yottabyte Processing" (PI: Prof. Satoshi Matsuoka of Tokyo Institute of Technology), which is a project in the Advanced Core Technologies for Big Data Integration area (Research Supervisor: Prof. Masaru Kitsuregawa of National Institute of Informatics).

Contact
Akihiko Okada
Office for Research Communication
RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science

Jens Wilkinson
RIKEN Global Relations and Research Coordination Office
Tel: +81-(0)48-462-1225 / Fax: +81-(0)48-463-3687
Email: pr@riken.jp

Graph500 , June 2014

No. Rank Machine Installation Site Number of nodes Number of cores Problem scale GTEPS
1 1 K computer (Fujitsu - Custom supercomputer) RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) 65536 524288 40 17977.1
2 2 DOE/NNSA/LLNL Sequoia (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 65536 1048576 40 16599
3 3 DOE/SC/Argonne National Laboratory Mira (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) Argonne National Laboratory 49152 786432 40 14328
4 4 JUQUEEN (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) 16384 262144 38 5848
5 5 Fermi (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) CINECA 8192 131072 37 2567
6 6 Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2) (National University of Defense Technology - MPP) Changsha, China 8192 196608 36 2061.48
7 7 Turing (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz) CNRS/IDRIS-GENCI 4096 65536 36 1427
8 7 Blue Joule (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) Science and Technology Facilities Council - Daresbury Laboratory 4096 65536 36 1427
9 7 DIRAC (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) University of Edinburgh 4096 65536 36 1427
10 7 Zumbrota (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) EDF R&D 4096 65536 36 1427
11 7 Avoca (IBM - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz) Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative 4096 65536 36 1427

 

[Hypersonicmissiles]

World's fastest supercomputer gets even faster

China's Tianhe-2, the world's fastest supercomputer, began an upgrade on Wednesday, said the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, in South China's Guangdong province.

Tianhe-2 retained its top spot for the third consecutive time on the biannual Top 500 list for supercomputers on Monday, according to the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, in South China's Guangdong province.

The upgrade will continue till the end of August or early September and increase overall computing speed from 54 to more than 100 petaflops per second, said Yuan Xuefeng, center director. It is still able to handle high levels of analyzing, computing and processing during the upgrade.

Tianhe-2 was developed by the National University of Defense Technology and has been in commercial operation since April.

In 2015, a hardware upgrade will start, after which the "super brain" is expected to be completely powered by domestically made chips.

Tianhe-2 occupied the top spot for the third time in the biannual Top500 list of supercomputers at the end of June. Its computing capacity in one hour equals that of the whole population of China using calculators for 1,000 years.

 

[BoQ77]

What's domestically made chips ? btw

 

[Hypersonicmissiles]

What's domestically made chips ? btw

Loongson, FeiTeng, ShenWei.

 

[BoQ77]

Loongson, FeiTeng, ShenWei.

Sunway BlueLight MPP ever used.

 

[mike2000]

What??? Russia doesnt even have 1 supercomputer on the list? Meanwhile India has a good 9. Thats surprising. Dont know if this is accurate or its just russia lagging so much behind?

 

[Hypersonicmissiles]

What??? Russia doesnt even have 1 supercomputer on the list? Meanwhile India haa a good 9. Thats surprising. Dont know if this is accurate or its just russia lagging so much behind?

you are so dumb.

 

[mike2000]

Lol u seem to be quite arrogant. Even though I made a mistake by missing Russia on the list that doesnt means im dumb or whatever. People make mistakes. Seems most members on here cant make a point/constructive arguments without insults or personal attacks (apart from a few members like chinese dragon and nihonji).

On another note im surprised to see Russia having just 5 in the list,lagging behind countries like Switzerland, Australia and even India. Surpring IMO, dont know if the list is accurate though.