The world’s fastest growing economy is China and the country have been advancing fast in IT and computing technology. It already has the world’s fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-1A, with a peak performance of 2.5 petaflops. It is now getting ready for the next step and will venture toward using its own chips in future supercomputers.
China is expected to use the Loongson series in the coming supercomputer Dawning 6000. The system will be ready this summer and will use tens of thousands Loongson processors for a total capacity of 1 petaflops. The supercomputer that is developed together Institute of Computing Technology of CAS and Dawning Information Industry Company (DIIC) will be a big step toward China’s selfreliant infrastructure.
At the same time, Hu Weiwu, Chief developer for the Loongson series, points out that Kina has a long way to go before it has processors that are as efficient as the American counterparts, Intel and AMD, the biggest problem is the limited software support. Something that also affects China’s and the fastest supercomputer today Tianhe-1A that consists of 14,336 Intel Xeon processors and 7,186 NVIDIA GPUs.
“Our information industry was using foreign technology. However, just like a country’s industry cannot always depend on foreign steel and oil, China’s information industry needs its own CPU (central processing unit)” säger Hu Weiwu
China has several powerful supercomputers, but according to Hu Weiwu they use nly a tenth of their capacities.
Interestingly Hu Weiwu says that China hopes to be able to sell its own microprocessors to USA and other countries, just like it exports clothes and shoes. This is not estimated to happen for another two decades though, but it hopes to cover its own needs within 10 years already, something that will definitely affect forreign companies.
Source: PeopleDaily
