[Information] Supercalculateurs Chinois

Pour la 5ème fois consécutive, le supercaculateur chinois Tianhe-2, conçu à à l'Université nationale de technologie de la défense, a été élu le supercalculateur le plus puissant au monde dans la liste TOP500, organisé en Allemagne.

A noter que le Chambre de commerce américain a interdit récemment l'exportation des CPU que les Chinois aimeraient utiliser dans le programme de l'Upgrade de Tianhe-2. Faire face à cet embargo, les Chinois ont décidé d'utiliser leur propre CPU pour l'upgrade.



Quelques applications civiles de Tianhe-2, comme par exemple le calcul des compositions chimiques pour l'antidote contre le virus Ebola. Le supercalculateur est capable d'analyser 42 millions compositions chimiques en une seule journée et en sélectionne quelques centaines qui pourraient avoir l'effet contre le virus, alors qu'un ordinateur normal ne peut traiter que 10 000 compositions par jour. Ceci explique pourquoi l'Académie militaire de médecine chinoise a parvenu à sortir un pisteur et un vaccin expérimental d'Ebola rapidement.



La prévision de la météo profite de la puissance de Tianhe-2 également. Le supercalculateur ne met que moins de 20 minutes pour obtenir la prévision de 24h avec une précision de 3 km.



Pour promouvoir l'utilisation de Tianhe-2, le centre de Guangzhou crée une plateforme publique qui permet aux secteurs civils de soumettre les projets de calcul et bénéficient donc ce que les chercheurs appellent "Cloud Supercalculation".



Henri K.

les histoires de pharmacie et autres vaccins sont de mauvais exemples pour illustrer les capacités réelles de ce supercalculateur.
la question qu'on peut donc se poser est pourquoi ont ils choisi cet exemple?

Le centre national de supercalculateur de Tianjin, où est hébergé le supercalculateur Tianhe-1, a été fermé à la suite des explosions au port de Tanggu. La partie bureautique du centre est très endommagé et est resté fermé, mais la partie de salle des machines est intact et le supercalculateur est redémarré pour fournir une partie de capacité.

On voit dans ce reportage les images des caméras de surveillance du centre au moment des explosions.



Henri K.

China will have two 100 petaflop supercomputers in 2016 and they will use domestic chips

Citation :

September 18, 2015

Within the next 12 months, China expects to be operating two 100 Petaflop computers, each containing (different) Chinese-made processors, and both coming online about a year before the United States’ 100 Petaflop machines being developed under the Coral initiative

In a separate move to acquire mastery of microprocessor technologies, China’s state owned Tsinghua Unigroup has made a bid to acquire US semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology for $23 billion, in what could be one of the biggest acquisitions of a US company by a Chinese firm.

Chinese RISC processor

Information in the public domain at the ISC High Performance Conference in Frankfurt in July suggested that China is developing a 100 Petaflop machine that will use its own CPU, designed in China. The computer is expected to start operating before the middle of next year.

Hitherto, international attention has focused on the Tianhe-2 computer developed by the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) and sited at the National Supercomputer Centre in Guangzhou, largely because it retained its position as the world’s No. 1 system for the fifth consecutive time when the most recent Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was announced in the middle of July.

However, the first Chinese machine to reach 100 Petaflops may be one being developed by the Jiangnan Institute of Computer Technology in Wuxi, near Shanghai. It will use a next-generation, Chinese designed and manufactured, ShenWei chip. A ShenWei processor, the SW1600, currently powers the Sunway BlueLight, which is already in operation at the National Supercomputer Centre in Jinan, and which ranked 86 in the Top500 published in July.

The next-generation ShenWei could come online as early as the end of this year, or towards the beginning of next year.


China Accelerator

The second domestically designed chip will be the ‘China Accelerator’ that the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) is developing for the Tianhe-2 supercomputer. As a result of the US embargo on Intel exporting any more Phi co-processors to the NUDT, the upgrade to the Tianhe-2 that will take it to 100 PFlops has been delayed until later in 2016. However, the effect has been to encourage the domestic development of Chinese co-processors.

Spoiler:

The interconnection topology for the Tianhe system is an optic-electronic hybrid. The NUDT had already created the interconnects, using high-radix Network Routing Chips (NRC) and high-speed Network Interface Chips (NIC), both of which were designed by Chinese engineers and are Chinese intellectual property.

NExtbigfuture had coverage in August about China's plans to upgrade the Tianhe supercomputer to 100 petaflop levels.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Since the next-generation ShenWei will be based on its own CPU chip and the co-processors for Tianhe-2 are being developed at the NUDT, China will enter the 100 Petaflop era with its own CPU, accelerator, and interconnect technologies.

Here is an older review of supercomputer chips.

Spoiler:

Henri K.