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The Platform reports that CPU export restrictions to Chinese supercomputing centers may have backfired. Tianhe-2 has remained the world's top supercomputer for the last five iterations of the TOP500 list using a heterogeneous architecture that mixes Intel's Xeon and Xeon Phi chips. Tianhe-2 will likely be upgraded to Tianhe-2A within the next year (rather than by the end of 2015 as originally planned), nearly doubling its peak performance from 54.9 petaflops to around 100 petaflops, while barely raising peak power usage. However, instead of using a new Intel Xeon Phi chip, a homegrown "China Accelerator" and novel architecture will be used.
A few details about the accelerator are known:
Unlike other [digital signal processor (DSP)] efforts that were aimed at snapping into supercomputing systems, this one is not a 32-bit part, but is capable of supporting 64-bit and further, it can also support both single (as others do) and double-precision. As seen below, the performance for both single and double precision is worth remarking upon (around 2.4 single, 4.8 double teraflops for one card) in a rather tiny power envelope. It will support high bandwidth memory as well as PCIe 3.0. In other words, it gives GPUs and Xeon Phi a run for the money—but the big question has far less to do with hardware capability and more to do with how the team at NUDT will be able to build out the required software stack to support applications that can gobble millions of cores on what is already by far the most core-dense machine on the planet.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:33PM
I dont know what was export controlled but I do know the Soviets reverse engineered many of our chips. But when our process shrunk below the size that they coudl reverse engineer they had to develop their own designs.
A UC Davis grad student told me this in 1981. I dont really know but speculate this contributed to the fall of Communism, perhaps by facilitating a free market.
Also DIGITAL designed something like "Stolen from the very best" into the traces of at least one of its boards, I expect because of the message of peace that was posted to usenet from kremvax.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:36PM
Eat my flied lice you honky bitch!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:39PM
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:40PM
And makes sure to add lead in the paint and poison in the baby formula. LOL.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @06:50PM
I reverse engineered my dick up your slut mom's dried up fuck hole. Then she begged me to jizz all over her pancake tits.
(Score: 0, Troll) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:24PM
Mom hasn't dated any other men since Dad passed away 2003. She still wears her wedding ring.
Care to elucidate?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:35PM
Way to feed the troll.
(Score: 2, Troll) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:37PM
I never downmod anybody because I agree withthe ACLU that the best response to hate speech is more speech.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:54PM
Just like I fed his mom trouser snake.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:52PM
Fucking != dating. I'd never be seen in public dating that hag bitch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @11:49PM
Your dad died. Ha ha!
- Nelson
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ThePhilips on Saturday July 18 2015, @10:59AM
I dont know what was export controlled but I do know the Soviets reverse engineered many of our chips. But when our process shrunk below the size that they coudl reverse engineer they had to develop their own designs.
A UC Davis grad student told me this in 1981.
That's just silly fairy tail. Most notably because at the time many computers actually came with the detailed schematics, so that you can diagnose and repair it yourself. One didn't need to RE a lot: one could just buy one with the full documentation. (Likewise, later, the schematics for the Intel's 8080 and 8086 were easily available, and it was easy to build on your own using normal microchips. One didn't need to RE anything.)
But Soviets did indeed reverse engineer lots of the chips. From my profs I also know that REing of the USA computers was largely done by and for the military and the intelligence. Only few of those REed designs actually went to the people who build the computers and software at the time.
And before the advent of microcomputers, they had their own full sized computers which were competitive. (Though at the time they also did RE IBM VMS.) Hey, I come from the ex-USSR and I have seen the dinosaurs.
The problem with the Soviet computer development wasn't that they lacked something technologically. The problem was the Soviet regime itself, with its stagnating planned economy. They have under-appreciated the impact of computers, and thus failed to create the market for them. The rest were just pure economics: lower production volumes, less specialists, leading to high prices on both hardware and software. Before 80s, computers were few and almost exclusively in the scientific and the military sectors - the business was still largely using pen and paper. While in the USA, the adoption of computers by the businesses played crucial role in making the computers eventually mainstream and affordable.