China Tops Global Supercomputer Speed List for 7th Year

TOP500

From link

“Considering that just 10 years ago, China claimed a mere 28 systems on the list, with none ranked in the top 30, the nation has come further and faster than any other country in the history of supercomputing,” the TOP500 organizers said in a statement.

This year’s champion is the Sunway TaihuLight at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, west of Shanghai, according to TOP500. It was developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology using entirely Chinese-designed processors.

The TaihuLight is capable of 93 petaflops, or quadrillion calculations per second, according to TOP500. It is intended for use in engineering and research including climate, weather, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and data analytics.

Is Australia anywhere on that list?
Not too long ago the only Australian computer on the list was the Animal Logic one dedicated to the production of “Happy Feet”.
A high speed computer promised for Victoria never arrived.
Then Australia had one real computer on the list.

Is New Zealand’s WETA computer (also only used for making animated movies) still on the list?

There is to be a talk in Melbourne by Robert Bell on high speed computing in Australia in the next few days. Robert Bell has been in charge of Australia’s computers used by CSIRO and the Met Bureau.

Australia has 2 in the top 100

79 is:

79 Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, Kensington, Western Australia
Australia Magnus – Cray XC40, Xeon E5-2690v3 12C 2.6GHz, Aries interconnect
Cray Inc.

The full list

Austria has none, and also Canada has none, which is surprising (in the top 100).

Australia has nothing in the 200-400 range.

The top CSIRO computer seems to be:
410 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Australia CSIRO GPU Cluster – Nitro G16 3GPU, Xeon E5-2650 8C 2GHz, Infiniband FDR, Nvidia K20m
Xenon Systems

After Brexit Europe will become fragile with Germany rearming to keep wavering nations who want their freedom in chez.
Merkil will fly to Italy to convince a wavering Italy to remain within the Axis.
She will remind France that Alsace-Lorraine was always part of Germany and will be part of the fourth Reich.
Tensions will slow build all across the Continent, with Russi moving forces to the west.

I imagine that unless you can actually design and manufacture all or most of the components for a supercomputer yourself you will have little chance of having any in the top couple of hundred. In Australia it would be especially expensive as all computer components have an Australia tax added to them so even when you factor in currency conversion they are still 20 – 50% more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world

Cymek said:

I imagine that unless you can actually design and manufacture all or most of the components for a supercomputer yourself you will have little chance of having any in the top couple of hundred. In Australia it would be especially expensive as all computer components have an Australia tax added to them so even when you factor in currency conversion they are still 20 – 50% more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world

What? Five out of the top ten are using Intel Xeon chips, and none of the computers are made by Intel.

Cymek said:

I imagine that unless you can actually design and manufacture all or most of the components for a supercomputer yourself you will have little chance of having any in the top couple of hundred. In Australia it would be especially expensive as all computer components have an Australia tax added to them so even when you factor in currency conversion they are still 20 – 50% more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world

it’s not about the ‘expense’ of the systems… it about having a necessity for it…

Cymek said:

I imagine that unless you can actually design and manufacture all or most of the components for a supercomputer yourself you will have little chance of having any in the top couple of hundred. In Australia it would be especially expensive as all computer components have an Australia tax added to them so even when you factor in currency conversion they are still 20 – 50% more expensive than just about anywhere else in the world

Two in the top hundred is well above what would be expected on a population basis.

GST is not payable on equipment bought direct from overseas, and is fully reclaimable on equipment bought in Australia.

Australian prices for computer equipment are comparable to those in other places outside the USA.

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

sibeen said:

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

Could a supercomputer be created solely used for simulations of the effects on the world of various political parties gaining power or would it self destruct ?

sibeen said:

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

There is an IBM BlueGene in the list at No 6

6 Mira – BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, Custom IBM, 786,432 Cores, Rmax (GFlop/s) 8,586,612

http://www.top500.org/system/177718

Cymek said:

Could a supercomputer be created solely used for simulations of the effects on the world of various political parties gaining power or would it self destruct ?

No, it wouldn’t self-destruct.

People would just wait to see what it said they would do, then do something else.

The #1 computer uses just over 15MW.

Warms the cockles of my heart, that does :)

I imagine though that if you wanted to design the worlds fastest supercomputer but your nation didn’t actually manufacture chips you’d have a much harder time sourcing the necessary equipment to do so. Are supercomputers all made from off the shelf components or are they specially and design for that purpose. The article mentions the Chinese one was made from Chinese designed processors, if they couldn’t make their own would the USA sell them top notch chips so they could be build it or would they get second rate (but still extremely powerful) ones as the best are restricted exports.

sibeen said:

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

The only Australian universities in the list are ANU at 99, followed by Adelaide at 4 hundred and something.

Not sure how relevant these numbers are to leading edge research anyway. I should think that what people are doing with ordinary computers is more important (but much harder to measure).

Cymek said:

I imagine though that if you wanted to design the worlds fastest supercomputer but your nation didn’t actually manufacture chips you’d have a much harder time sourcing the necessary equipment to do so. Are supercomputers all made from off the shelf components or are they specially and design for that purpose. The article mentions the Chinese one was made from Chinese designed processors, if they couldn’t make their own would the USA sell them top notch chips so they could be build it or would they get second rate (but still extremely powerful) ones as the best are restricted exports.

The nationalist Chinese in Formosa are right up there with computer technology and I’m sure they would help out their cousins across the strait for a modest sum.

Cymek said:

I imagine though that if you wanted to design the worlds fastest supercomputer but your nation didn’t actually manufacture chips you’d have a much harder time sourcing the necessary equipment to do so. Are supercomputers all made from off the shelf components or are they specially and design for that purpose. The article mentions the Chinese one was made from Chinese designed processors, if they couldn’t make their own would the USA sell them top notch chips so they could be build it or would they get second rate (but still extremely powerful) ones as the best are restricted exports.

it’s less about how fast a single calculation can be made and more about how many simultaneous calculations can be made.

sibeen said:

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

My understanding is that it was never installed.

Cymek said:

Could a supercomputer be created solely used for simulations of the effects on the world of various political parties gaining power or would it self destruct ?

It was done in, I think, 1974.
Back then, though, supercomputer had a different meaning.

sibeen said:

The #1 computer uses just over 15MW.

Warms the cockles of my heart, that does :)

What the CSIRO Cray 1 was decommissioned, it was sold as a space heater. I hope someone is still using it to heat their building.

mollwollfumble said:

sibeen said:

Shows you how quickly these things change. I helped out for the supporting infrastructure for an IBM Blue Gene at Melbourne Uni a few years ago. It was supposedly the quickest in the Southern hemisphere and easily in the top 50 or so. I doubt it would make the top 2 thousand nowadays.

My understanding is that it was never installed.

Your understanding is wrong.