China and the US dominate when
it comes to the world’s fastest supercomputers, owning 45.4 per cent and 21.8
per cent of the top systems globally respectively
Multibillion-dollar investment
aimed at upgrading three existing supercomputer labs to the latest exascale
computing technology over three-year period
China is planning a multibillion-dollar
investment to upgrade its supercomputer infrastructure to regain leadership
after the US took top spot for the fastest supercomputer in 2018, ending
China’s five-year dominance, according to people familiar with the matter.
China is aiming for its newest
Shuguang supercomputers to operate at about 50 per cent faster than the current
best US machines, which assuming all goes to plan should help China wrest the
title back from the US in this year’s rankings of the world’s fastest machines,
according to people, who asked not to be named discussing private information.
These next-generation Chinese
supercomputers will be delivered to the computer network information Centre of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing for the global Top500 rankings
of the world’s fastest computers, the people said.
The ability to produce
state-of-the-art supercomputers is an important metric of any nation’s
technical prowess as they are widely deployed for tasks ranging from weather
predictions and modelling ocean currents to energy technology and simulating
nuclear explosions. Demand for supercomputing in commercial applications is
also on the rise, driven by developments in artificial intelligence.
In 2015, US President Barack
Obama signed an executive order to authorise the creation of the National
Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to accelerate the development of
technologies for exascale supercomputers and to fund research into
post-semiconductor-based computing.
Exascale computing refers to
machines capable of at least a quintillion (or a billion billion) calculations
per second.
Bottom of Form
Calls to the computer network
information centre of CAS seeking confirmation of the plan were not answered
and the centre did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Phone calls
made to China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, which coordinates the
country’s science and technology activities, went unanswered. The National
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program
that oversees the NSCI did not immediately respond to an email asking for
comment on China’s plan.
China and the US dominate when
it comes to the world’s fastest supercomputers, owning 45.4 per cent and 21.8
per cent of the top systems globally respectively, followed by 6.2 per cent for
Japan and 4 per cent in the United Kingdom, according to the Top500 list released
in November. Supercomputer rivalry between the US and China has also been
reflected in trade friction between the two countries, especially since China’s
rapid rise in the field.
China began to build
supercomputers without US semiconductors after the Obama administration banned
the sale of high-end Intel, Nvidia and AMD chips for Chinese supercomputers in
2015. The following year, China launched its Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer,
powered by a Linux-based Chinese operating system and incorporating a locally
developed chip called Matrix-2000. This machine became the fastest
supercomputer on the Top500 list in June 2016.
“Huge information processing
capability is the foundation of artificial intelligence, the industrial
internet, 5G and other future industries,” said Cao Zhongxiong, executive
director of new technology studies at Shenzhen-based think tank China
Development Institute. “Although the US is a major competitor and it has tried
to rein in China’s progress, the enormous internal demand for supercomputing
capacity has forced China to solve the problems through its independent
development.”
China’s planned investment,
funded by the central government and respective local governments, will help
the country lay out a bigger blueprint for the future development of Chinese
supercomputers.
Specifically, funding will be
used to upgrade three existing facilities to the latest exascale computing
machines over the next three years.
The Qingdao National
Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, the National Supercomputing
Centre of Tianjin and National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen are expected
to complete their upgrade to exascale computing machines in 2020, 2021 and
2022, respectively, as part of efforts by China for “continuous leadership” in
supercomputing, said the people, adding that the exascale computers in these
centres should be able to perform calculations several times faster than
Summit, the top US machine.
The US has its Exascale
Computing Project with the goal of launching an exascale computing ecosystem by
2021.
The four other national
supercomputer centres in China are located in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Ji’nan,
Shandong province, Changsha, Hunan province, and Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
Although the US has dominated
supercomputing for many years, China has been No 1 on the global Top500 list
since the launch of Tianhe-2 in 2013. Located in the National Supercomputer
Centre in Guangzhou, Tianhe-2 was built by China’s National University of
Defence Technology.
China was able to maintain No
1 spot until 2017. However, in June 2018 the US Summit supercomputer operated
by the US Department of Energy became No 1 in the Top500 list, pushing Sunway
TaihuLight at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi into second place.
In the most recent semi-annual
global contest in November last year, the Summit and Sierra US supercomputers
led in the charts, while China’s Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2 were in third
and fourth positions.
Leading supercomputer
manufacturers in China include the National Research Centre of Parallel
Computer Engineering and Technology, Dawning Information Industry, and the
National University of Defence Technology.
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