Bigger, Faster, More Efficient
This leap in capability and the corresponding change in the supercomputer’s systematic structure demonstrate the huge technical leap made in China. And in October 2010 Tianhe-1A was unveiled by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology as an upgraded version of Tianhe-1. Tianhe-1A’s theoretical peak performance of 4.701 petaflops took it to the top of the 2010 World TOP 500 Supercomputer List.
Innovation and Independently Developed CPUs
Compared with the world’s other supercomputers whose computing rates exceed one petaflop, Tianhe-1 was unique in combining its own new version of the standard central processing unit (CPU) with graphic processing units (GPUs). It was the first hybrid supercomputer to incorporate GPUs, originally developed to process computer games, into its system, an innovation that the current leader of the Top 500 list also includes.
Tianhe-1’s technology has also garnered interest from overseas GPU manufacturers, who approached the R&D staff responsible for Tianhe-1’s developments in order to collaborate with them. Most GPUs can only employ 20 percent of its computing capacity, but the GPUs installed in Tianhe-1 work at 70 percent
Even when it was just breaking into the field, China went all out to improve its own ability to make independent developments. In October 2011, China unveiled Sunway BlueLight MPP, its first supercomputer entirely based on homegrown microprocessors.
This was a major breakthrough for China, which had in the past relied on Western technology for high-performance computing. It reaffirmed China’s position among the computing world’s elite, joining the U.S. and Japan in their ability to build petaflop supercomputers, with their own independently developed processors.
The Sunway BlueLight MPP system is composed of nine 3-meter-high computer cabinets. According to Pan Jingshan, assistant to chief of the China’s National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, each cabinet contains 124 CPUs, and each CPU has 16 kernels. With around 18,000 kernels, its packing density ranks second in the world.
Sunway’s water-cooling system is also notable. When in operation, supercomputers get incredibly hot and it takes a huge effort to keep them from overheating. Sunway’s cooling system is remarkably efficient, consuming just one megawatt of power, compared to the seven megawatts consumed by the cooling system of the U.S.’s 1.75 petaflop Jaguar.
Gu Weidong, director of China’s National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, explained that the water cooling system was like a sandwich, with the water-cooling plate tightly clamped between two CPU boards, achieving seamless synchronized heat dissipation. Dongarra, a distinguished professor of computer science in University of Tennessee, praised Sunway’s intricate cooling system, saying that it was a significant advance in supercomputer design.
Furthermore, Dr. Hans Meuer, an international authority on supercomputers and co-founder of the Top 500 list, remarked that the combination of Sunway’s computing technology that equaled the Intel Processor and low power consumption signified that China is now equipped with the technical capacity to change the future industrial pattern.
Supercomputers in Use
Famous supercomputers include Deep Blue, designed to play chess, and Douglas Adams’ fictional Deep Thought, created to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Most supercomputers, however, have much more practical applications.
Though sheer numbers of zeros are involved in measuring supercomputers’ speed, this means little if separated from their actual use. “The Top 500 list is mainly about technical indexes of supercomputers. What we should be more concerned with is how to expand supercomputers’ fields of operation and use their abilities to their greatest advantage in various applications,” said Prof. Qian Depei, a renowned computer scientist.
Tianhe-1 itself has provided computing services for over 300 domestic customers. On average it is running at 70 percent capacity and is available for use in several fields of interests.
Currently, Tianhe-1 is the fastest supercomputer available for a wide range of applications. These include processing data from remote sensing satellites in order to predict the weather as well as data from the exploration of natural resources to determine the location and extent of oil and natural gas reserves.
In early 2011, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) first used Tianhe-1 to process its petroleum exploration data over an area of 1,060 square kilometers. It took only 16 hours for the supercomputer to process the data, 30 times faster than the previous computer available to CNPC. Since then, CNPC, SINOPEC and China National Offshore Oil Corporation have become major clients of Tianhe-1.
Tianhe-1 is also used extensively in fields closely related to human living and health such as biological pharmacy and bio-agriculture. Conventionally, to develop a new medicine involves investigating, in some cases, millions of compounds and often takes more than a decade to complete. However, using Tianhe-1 supercomputing platform, scientists can cut the development period to 1-2 years. Relying on the supercomputing capacity of Tianhe-1, the Drug Discovery and Design Center of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has achieved several world-leading research results.
The employment of supercomputers in such fields can bring about a huge boost to a country’s innovation in science and technology as well as to its economy as a whole. However, in China, supercomputer clients such as research institutes, universities and enterprises are usually pestered with such problems as the high costs of using supercomputers, weak software development, and the low rate of use of supercomputer-related hardware. Undoubtedly, Tianhe-1 has blazed a bright way for the practical application of supercomputers and fully exploring their potential.
“In a sense, its application is more important than the successful development of the supercomputer itself. Its power is embodied in how it is applied. Only when it has a wide range of use do people’s pursuit of high performance become meaningful,” remarked Meng Xiangfei, director of the Application Department of the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin.
