The Dawn 5000A supercomputer of China, with Microsoft Windows HPC 2008 Operating System installed ranks top 10 in the top 500 list of supercomputers in the world, reaching 233.47 trillion float point operations per second in the system theory peak and 180.6 trillion float point operations per second in the measured value Linpack peak. China has become the second country which masters the skills to research and develop 100 trillion times supercomputers. The United States was the first one.
Zhao Xiaofang, director of High-performance computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Computer Research Center, said this supercomputer, placed atthe Shanghai Super Computing Center, effectively combined applicability and ease of use.
【Super-computing】
Supercomputer counting a day equals a home computer operating for 33 years
"The 100-trillion-times computer counts in a day what the home PC counts in 33 years." Yao Jifeng, director of high-performance computing technology of Shanghai Super Computing Center said. From Dawn No. 1 to Dawn 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and then to today's Dawn 5000A, from a peak speed of 2.5 billion times per second, up to 20 billion times per second, and then to today's 100 trillion times, China's high performance computers continue to rewrite history.
The consistent historic breakthrough is derived from the Dawn and Microsoft's strong combination. In November 2007, Microsoft and the Dawn carried out comprehensive cooperation in high performance computing. In July 2008, the computing efficiency of the Microsoft Windows HPC 2008 system measured with the 32-node test at the Dawn's industrial base in Tianjin was 84 percent, entering the world list of supercomputers. On October 28, 2008, Linpack set the new standard - 180.6 trillion times. Thus the history of Chinese high performace computing entered a new era.
【Complementary advantages】
High performance and convenience cooperation
"The cooperation between Microsoft and Dawn will greatly promote the popularization of high performance computers in China. Microsoft products, convenience and comfortable interface will provide a good entry opportunity for users", Zhao Xiaofang said.
In China's high performance computing market, operating system stability and ease of use are important factors in product choosing. At the same time, as an important factor for the optimal operation of the software and the system, a mature and sound hardware platform as well as the optimization of the applicability for industries and the integration of different system levels also play a key role in users' application. Microsoft's global vice president, Zhang Yaqing, said that "Windows is a very widely used platform and we hope through such efforts to bring Dawn's server hardware to the global market."
Information Industry vice president of Dawn Nie Hua said, "this cooperation further accelerates the domestic server technology development and improves the Microsoft high performance computing in China's influence, speeding up applications and popularization of China's high performance computer products".
【Development trend】
Not able to see its existence, but it can bring unprecedented convenience
"The development of computers is like the history of the development of libraries. Due to the interests of the readers, the number of libraries increases from one to a few, but after there was a number of libraries, because there was not a a complete research system through which reach all the resources, the readers requested to have one broad scale library", Zhao Xiaofang said. In a similar way, after going from centralisation to distribution, now the global computer growing trend is switching back from distribution to centralisation. High performance computers went from serving specific tasks for one or a few scientists to supporting today almost everybody's lives.
"High performance computers are an important strategic equipment that can create the basic conditions to help us overcome problems in every realm." She Hua said "they can be used to support spacecrafts into space, meteorological research, drug development, the provision of rice genome sequencing". Yao Jifeng added, "high performance computers can transfer a large amount of data into useful information."
"When high performance computing will reach its extreme, it should disappear from our view: we will not see it, but it will be omnipresent in our lives, bringing an unprecedented convenience. Just like the way we are using electricity. This is our goal", Zhao Xiaofang said.
By People's Daily Online
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