Human curiosity about space exploration and pursuit of scale and accuracy problems, determine the people demand for supercomputing power "will not stop. In the P super calculate after implementation, E super calculate, namely ten billion supercomputer, will become the world compete for the "next crown".
"New" world's fastest supercomputer ", compared to the light of the taihu lake, "appearance, after all over the world. "The world's first" how fast? Guang-wen Yang, director of the national center for supercomputing wuxi played an analogy: ", compared to the light of the taihu lake, "a minute of computing power, equivalent to 7.2 billion people worldwide use calculator uninterrupted 32 years.
The speed is 93 pflops, floating point arithmetic speed 930 million times per second, for the first time in human history, the high performance computer operation speed record close to one billion times per second the orders of magnitude.
However, there is no limit to the human pursuit of super computer performance. "Super calculate performance per one order of magnitude, human demand could improve on them 1000 times, namely 3 orders of magnitude." Computing researcher of Chinese academy of sciences, China computer society the high-performance computing branch secretary general Mr Zhang told "proceedings in China" reporter in an interview, the human curiosity about space exploration and pursuit of scale and accuracy problems, determine the people demand for supercomputing power "will not stop.
"At best P super calculate after implementation, E supercomputers will become the world compete for the 'next crown, which is ten billion times supercomputer." Mr Zhang told reporters.
Around the year 2020 is expected to achieve
Super calculate level is a national comprehensive national strength and an important symbol of science and technology innovation ability, the competition for E supercomputers, they mixed with the national strategy.
Since the "tianhe ii in formal summit in November 2013 when after the super calculate rank in the top of the top is super power in the United States have three consecutive years did not get their hands on the throne. However, the indications are that the United States never left behind in the "fastest supercomputers echelon".
Global super calculate the TOP500 list of sponsors, oak ridge national laboratory, and jack tang, a professor at the university of Tennessee William gallas (JackDongarra) in the proceedings of China correspondent E-mail interview, said the U.S. department of energy (doe) through the national strategic plan (NSCI) as well as cooperation with industry and academia, is pushing to ten billion times the development of the computing system. "The system integration ability of hardware and software, in a series of application of the performance demand on behalf of the government will is 10 quadrillion times, 100 times of the system."
The reporter understands, Europe, Japan has also laid down their own E super calculate development plan, and will complete the timetable set in the corresponding plan in 2020.
, Mr Zhang said China will also be ten billion times the super computer and related technology research in the national "much starker choices-and graver consequences-in planning, at the same time also hope that in 2020 years to achieve this grand project. Unexpectedly, in several countries have made a plan to related, only the United States "pessimistic" relatively, they expect ten billion supercomputer built may need to 2022.
The personage inside course of study thinks, this puzzle may not be in the United States, because with the increase of high performance computing scale, the difficulty of the build it could lift is a geometric series.
The challenge of E supercomputers
Mr Zhang told reporters that ten billion supercomputer built difficulty lies in the speed of ascension is not just, more is for large-scale super calculate equipment power requirements. According to the internationally recognized standard of advocated by the United States, E super calculate power consumption should be lower than 20 mw. In accordance with the requirements for the target power consumption, the future E supercomputers can effect comparing to reach 50 gflops/W.
In Mr Zhang's view, this is a formidable walls, after all in Green500 third, created a large-scale high-performance computer efficiency than the best performance per watt ", compared to the light of the taihu lake, "only six gflops, is still an order of magnitude difference.
"Power consumption, it is difficult to overstep is all countries in the face of the problem." Mr Zhang told reporters: "now we hope to adopt the way of heterogeneous acceleration or heterogeneous integrated to reduce the power consumption requirements, but the result is the difficulty of programming. Therefore, to say the research E super calculate actually facing programming walls, walls, reliability, power consumption, and storage wall a few 'walls' containment, how to cross the walls, facing big challenge."
When asked the question, jack tang gallas to journalists lists a ten billion "there is no particular order" calculation before the implementation of "top 10 challenges" list, describe in detail the way of realizing ten billion supercomputer "obstacle".
In the list, about the challenges of the computing performance has two, respectively is to develop more efficient circuit, power and cooling technology, and increase the performance of data flow and energy efficiency; About computing hardware upgrade of only one: the integration of advanced technology in order to improve the capacity and bandwidth, memory But about software development environment and challenges are many, respectively is to develop more extensible system software, the invention is suitable for massively parallel processing new programming environment, create a more optimized data management software, etc. In this list, jack tang gallas also remind calculated from the view point of system or more scientists need to prepare to meet the challenge of the E calculation, such as to restore ten billion super calculate system solutions to scientific problems, improve the productivity of the new software tools and environment, to ensure that the E super calculate failure occurs the repeatability of scientific computing, etc.
"E"
"Run ten billion times per second, this is a machine that we see today computing speed of dozens of one hundred times, the computer in the future will be a new 'species'. Moreover, they are not only is fast, more is that they can deal with large data in a whole new way." Jack tang gallas said, "it will be very necessary, E super calculate the future will be very useful, such as they may be able to conquer cancer."
"In order to find the cure for cancer, we need to find patterns in the haven't seen before." Jack tang gallas said, in terms of cancer treatment, people are faced with the challenge is not the lack of relevant data, now more than ever, but how to "open" the data, and find the reasonable model to deal with it, to tell people exactly what causes cancer or how to more effectively against it. "Super computer is used to analyze the genome and related molecular data set, family history records, and other associated with cancer in patients with complex information tools. With the development of super computer, I believe we can find the answer."
Mr Zhang also pointed out that E supercomputers are so "welcome", in dealing with common human face is in its health crisis, energy crisis, environmental pollution and climate change and other major issues will play a huge role. "For now, E super calculate main face some significant computational requirements, such as global climate change simulations, astrophysics big data processing, simulation of the evolution of the universe, new materials and no nuclear weapons inventory simulation, etc."
In addition, jack tang gallas, points out that ten billion computing devices in addition to various industries to speed up shift contribute, improving national competitiveness, "downward flow" to promote industrial development, such as enhanced consumption, including from smart phones to the camera, electronic products, such as computing system hardware and software performance.
Independent implementation of dawn
In the "great power, the light of the taihu lake" with independent chip and computing speed of the operating system for nearly one billion times, independent research and development of China saw E super calculate ray and hope. Mr Zhang thinks that the success of "great power, the light of the taihu lake" has been for our country to E super calculate laid a solid foundation, as long as the reserve talents, resources, funds and materials, impact E is just around the corner.
According to the general law of scientific research, in such big science device before formal into the research and development agenda, the prototype system and so on preparatory programme is very necessary.
"From the prototype system to large-scale systems, the difficulty is to increase the geometric multiples. Prototype system is unlikely to be exposed to all the questions." Mr Zhang said, but the pre-research item can verify some of the key technology, test and improvement, to some of the key technical difficulties "built for the whole system to clear the way, avoid big technical mistakes and problems."
"Much starker choices-and graver consequences-in" in the latest national high performance computing subject as you can see, in our country the public out of the three from zhongke shuguang, national university of defense technology and jiangnan institute of computing technology led E super calculate prototype system development project. According to sources, the division in shuguang led E super calculate prototype system development project will dawn technology innovation conference held in the near future (IDIC2016) officially launched.
"Our national development E is super 'three head in hand - it represents China super calculate" three pillar "- three units in the fields of both super calculate technology has strong research and development strength." Mr Zhang told reporters that in E supercomputers to develop our country adopts is a competition mechanism, after two years is expected to evaluate the three units and, finally draw the best solution to integrate into the final E super calculate development system of the country.
