Friday, October 29, 2010

That Chinese Supercomputer, Tianhe-1A (Milky Way)


China has officially built the world's faster computer. This is impressive. Most people have been saying that its all built from US parts. There is some truth to that. The CPUs and whatnot are nvidia GPUs and CPUs (AMD?) are US $tech.

However, the ever important interconnect is NOT American. This is homegrown and that is really impressive. Interconnects are hard. its also rumored to be twice as fast as QDR infiniband and laid out as a fat tree. its also rumored to use around 14 MW. That's excellent.

This has been compared to what the Japanese did with the Earth Simulator. That claimed the top spot for some time because it was around 4x+ faster than the US counterparts. The difference here between Tinhe-1A and the US counterparts is not that much, in comparison: 50%. I would expect this machine to be overtaken in a year at most. Possibly by June.

Congratulations to the Chinese. I wish I were going to SC10 now. Its sure to be an exciting event now. we'll see if the US can pull out any surprise benchmarks now. Never know. I doubt it though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Will,
I came across this site, not sure if you remember me, Laura Sanchez now Laura Gibbs from NMSU. My email is voiceoflaura@yahoo.com. You have a wonderful family. I am married too. Write if you get a chance.
Laura