News on China's scientific and technological development.

... to deliver real world benefits ...
here's the problem: you know, I've been hearing about 'real world benefits to be delivered by a supercomputer' for a long time, for example twenty years ago
#1 had 2,048 cores and 368 GFlops
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while ten years after
#1 had 131,072 cores and 281 TFlops
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while ten years after
#1 has 10,649,600 cores and 93,015 TFlops
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and managers etc. have been talking about 'real world' all the time, so I just wonder, GENERALLY ABOUT ALL SUPERCOMPUTERS IRRESPECTIVE IF IN US, JAPAN, ..., if they'll ever deliver (I'm not interested in applications to beat benchmarks if you hear me)
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
I don't mean to naysay as SamuraiBlue :) the Chinese achievements in supercomputing but if it had been my problem, I would've been interested in REAL benefits of ever-increasing output, in an analogy with increasing the caliber of main battery guns of Battleships in let's say 1910-40 I mean it was considered to be strategic investment (as supercomputing is), it worked (as supercomputers do, despite SamuraiBlue not liking the metrics :) but 'the ultimate Battleship', while tactically dubious, would've been just too expensive to build, and the analogy would be if an exascale computer could "forecast with certainty" (*) for example China's coastal area weather in real time?
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(*) some stuff can't be easily (because of "the chaotic nature of the problem")

just my thoughts after lunch, in the middle of Europe, anyway ...
Ask your question to all countries in that list, specially USA and Japan, you will get your answer. I am sure you were busy celebrating when Titan was nr.1 and you didn't bother to question it? You don't need to ask the question just because it is a Chinese computer sitting on the top. Or you just have a problem when and only when it is China on the top. That is typical you. So, you are just like SB even you deny, hey, why deny it.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
There is a gimick in the fastest claim. The Sunway TaihuLight CPUs doesn't communicate with one another as fast as the Japan's K supercomputer. That is the reason why K is at top of
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ratings with less CPU cores while the Sunway TaihuLight that has 15 time more CPU can't out do K in Graph500.
It has to do as wiki explains,
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in which K is able to move more data at one time through parallel computing. This is required for real time weather prediction and/or process big data collected through all the sensors that is accumulating at an alarming rate.
At the end it all boils down to the architecture of the super computer's design.
What is your point then?

Put China aside since you apparently have a problem with Chinese supercomputer being nr.1. Let's say Titan the ex nr.1 and the current 3rd. DID you advocate the belief that top500 is a gimmick setup when Titan or K was nr. 1?

Let me put this straight, you are a person cheering when you win the game, but calling the very same game unfair (gimmick) when you loose. Or you would move the goalposts (changing the game instead) like before?
 
here's the problem: you know, I've been hearing about 'real world benefits to be delivered by a supercomputer' for a long time, for example twenty years ago
#1 had 2,048 cores and 368 GFlops
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while ten years after
#1 had 131,072 cores and 281 TFlops
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while ten years after
#1 has 10,649,600 cores and 93,015 TFlops
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and managers etc. have been talking about 'real world' all the time, so I just wonder, GENERALLY ABOUT ALL SUPERCOMPUTERS IRRESPECTIVE IF IN US, JAPAN, ..., if they'll ever deliver (I'm not interested in applications to beat benchmarks if you hear me)
LOL! including also

#1 in 2001 with 7226 GFlops
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and
#1 in 2011 with 10510 TFlops
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I quickly scrambled this:
JsROx.jpg

(at first I plotted up to one exa Flops but then even the 2011 point became like invisible :)

and you may tell me
  1. how far it's necessary to go to be able to predict California weather, Honshu Island weather, ... weather, in real time?
  2. if people will go into
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    computing?
now this business sure looks like a boondoggle to me
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
So much of distracting and irrelevant comment. You know that the K Computer in the Graph500 list didn't even make it into the Top500 list whereas the Taihulight is in the Graph500 2nd and Top500 1st place?

You have bragged so much about the K Computer being good at atmospheric/weather prediction application. Instead of just bragging, why not show the proof of exactly what it can actually do, like what the Taihulight has done by winning the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize by doing exactly the kind of application you claimed the K Computer was good at. i.e. atmospheric simulation/prediction application.

The fact of the matter is both the data communication speed and FLOPS performance are important in processing but we can tell from the above competition the latter is the more significant determinant in the above kind of application, and in probably most other application.

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Chinese supercomputer project wins top int'l prize
Source: Xinhua 2016-11-18 20:28:47
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NANJING, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese team on Friday won the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize, a top honor in high-performance com
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g, for an application running on China's fastest supercomputer.

It is the first time a Chinese team has won the award.

The project, named "10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics," presents a method for calculating atmospheric dynamics, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, which presented the award at the International Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City in the
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.

"The application can help improve global climate simulation and weather prediction," said Yang Guangwen, director of the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. ....
SB is doing exactly what he is good at "moving the goal post". Imagine the following:

After Ferrari won a formula 1 race, SB would come out and claim that Ferrari is nothing compared to Toyota prius which is the greenest car in the world. See how and where has he moved the goal post?!:rolleyes:
 
...
if people will go into
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computing?
...
... and this early morning I took it ad absurdum (or not?!) by

(it's not clean but I needed to be quick :) taking the buildup from 2011; 2016 and assuming one exaFlops achieved in 2021:
4eFRX.jpg

the nitty-gritty:
a=2.2538;b=0.75104;c=2.3973;
solving y=a+b*exp(c*x) for 1000 (=one zetta):
z =
5.8824

in a graph:
XkWh.jpg
the present time hardly distinguishable from zero (one exa expected only around 2020), but ... LOL!

EDIT
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Last edited:

Quickie

Colonel
SB is doing exactly what he is good at "moving the goal post". Imagine the following:

After Ferrari won a formula 1 race, SB would come out and claim that Ferrari is nothing compared to Toyota prius which is the greenest car in the world. See how and where has he moved the goal post?!:rolleyes:

Out of curiosity in line with the matter of green technology I just checked and found out the K-computer is way down below at the 224th placing at the Green500 list.

A smaller number of cores doesn't always mean higher energy efficiency (contrary to what Samurai has been alleging about) if the individual cores are more complicated with a larger number of integrated circuits thereby consuming more energy.
 
... and this early morning I took it ad absurdum (or not?!) by

(it's not clean but I needed to be quick :) taking the buildup from 2011; 2016 and assuming one exaFlops achieved in 2021:
4eFRX.jpg

the nitty-gritty:
a=2.2538;b=0.75104;c=2.3973;
solving y=a+b*exp(c*x) for 1000 (=one zetta):
z =
5.8824

in a graph:
XkWh.jpg
the present time hardly distinguishable from zero (one exa expected only around 2020), but ... LOL!

EDIT
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guys it's amazing ... now I quickly googled
1993 59.7 GFlops
1998 1338
2003 35860
and pulled into the script used above (a=10.5463;b=1.82009;c=3.29607 this time)
and ...
one peta (one million GFlops here ... LOL just checking everything now) is predicted at
z =

4.0098

which corresponds to 2008 and the first computer reached petascale "on May 25, 2008, with sustained performance of 1.026 petaflops" according to wiki ... and the story gets even better for
one exa with
z =

6.1056
corresponding to 2018 so people would be actually BEHIND the original buildup!!

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