Any doubt about Chinese IT capabilities?

[THAIPHUKET]

Better read this of today´s Blommberg http://goo.gl/ekqdXn

[THAIPHUKET]

• Previous leading machines depended on US-designed chips
• More Chinese supercomputers in top 500 than US for first time

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In a threat to U.S. technology dominance, the world’s fastest supercomputer is powered by Chinese-designed semiconductors for the first time. It’s a breakthrough for China’s attempts to reduce dependence on imported technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, located at the state-funded Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, is more than twice as powerful as the previous winner, according to TOP500, a research organization that compiles the rankings twice a year. The machine is powered by a SW26010 processor designed by Shanghai High Performance IC Design Center, TOP500 said Monday.

"It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," said Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement method used by TOP500. "This is a system that has Chinese processors."

[impulse]

I'll start worrying when they can build a toilet that doesn't "announce" itself from 50 meters away- 150 meters on a hot, windless day.

[Chicog]

No doubts there but I wonder what the US have got under Fort Meade and Langley.

[impulse]

No doubts there but I wonder what the US have got under Fort Meade and Langley.

Septic systems that work.

[lostinisaan]

• Previous leading machines depended on US-designed chips
• More Chinese supercomputers in top 500 than US for first time

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In a threat to U.S. technology dominance, the world’s fastest supercomputer is powered by Chinese-designed semiconductors for the first time. It’s a breakthrough for China’s attempts to reduce dependence on imported technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, located at the state-funded Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, is more than twice as powerful as the previous winner, according to TOP500, a research organization that compiles the rankings twice a year. The machine is powered by a SW26010 processor designed by Shanghai High Performance IC Design Center, TOP500 said Monday.

"It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," said Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement method used by TOP500. "This is a system that has Chinese processors."

Drive in a Chinese high speed train and if survived, please report back. Thank you very much for your consideration.

China copies freaking everything, but nothing is good. And I mean nothing...wait, plenty of girls are good.

[losworld]

They are building pretty decent chips now. Have a look at mediatek processors in phone which are priced lower than qualcom and intel chips yet perform quite well and arent' so prone to heating.

[muratremix]

They are building pretty decent chips now. Have a look at mediatek processors in phone which are priced lower than qualcom and intel chips yet perform quite well and arent' so prone to heating.

Mediatek uses Arm IP. Also, it is Taiwanese, not chinese company.

I doubt this supercomputer uses china designed (arm / mips like) cpu.

And with 1 million cpu cores, of course it'll provide raw power.

Give me 5 billion dollars and I can build even faster one. More cpu / gpu = faster supercomputer.

[KhunBENQ]

So many petaflops at the met offices worldwide and still no reliable weather report

Brute force leads to nothing without human brains.

10 years ago I had to deal with young Chinese "software engineers".

They had the level of C++ programmers/coders from a training course to western standards.

Much must have improved if they are on level today.

Not saying it's not possible.

Edited June 20, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[THAIPHUKET]

What you all are saying, a few even a bit more substantiated then most that

1. Bloomberg report is utter nonsense

2. that the alleged buyers of Chinese Super Computers simply have no clue

what they are buying

[Lannig]

I think that you get what you pay for in China.

Plenty of very cheap workforce, plenty of companies building cheap stuff meaning crap produced and robots who learn the Microsoft, Cisco etc. certification books by heart but have precisely zero ability for structured thinking and creativity. I've worked with these, I know them.

On the other hand, given unlimited funding (i.e. state-funded), I'm sure that the Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Lannig

[THAIPHUKET]

That´s exactly it

Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

The Will matters not how one gets there.

We used to ridicule with the same arogance Japanese Cars

and where are we today???

[Chicog]

Bear in mind that most of China's technology is stolen from the West.

They are our generations version of "Jap Copy".

[THAIPHUKET]

Sea battle of Marathon, Persian Invasion of Greece 490BC

Invading, plundering, slaughtering,

40,000 years of Imperialism unabated

Tactics are the same, means have changed

Cyber Wars will cause different casualties,

[casualbiker]

• Previous leading machines depended on US-designed chips

More Chinese supercomputers in top 500 than US for first time

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

In a threat to U.S. technology dominance, the world’s fastest supercomputer is powered by Chinese-designed semiconductors for the first time. It’s a breakthrough for China’s attempts to reduce dependence on imported technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, located at the state-funded Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, is more than twice as powerful as the previous winner, according to TOP500, a research organization that compiles the rankings twice a year. The machine is powered by a SW26010 processor designed by Shanghai High Performance IC Design Center, TOP500 said Monday.

"It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves," said Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement method used by TOP500. "This is a system that has Chinese processors."

Drive in a Chinese high speed train and if survived, please report back. Thank you very much for your consideration.

China copies freaking everything, but nothing is good. And I mean nothing...wait, plenty of girls are good.

So you have been in a Chinese high speed train? Sent to via a Chinese made phone.

[casualbiker]

I think that you get what you pay for in China.

Plenty of very cheap workforce, plenty of companies building cheap stuff meaning crap produced and robots who learn the Microsoft, Cisco etc. certification books by heart but have precisely zero ability for structured thinking and creativity. I've worked with these, I know them.

On the other hand, given unlimited funding (i.e. state-funded), I'm sure that the Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

You may actually be surprised at the "cheap" work force. Many Chinese companies in labour intensive industries are actually relocating to Africa because labour costs are on the rise!

[Lannig]

I think that you get what you pay for in China.

Plenty of very cheap workforce, plenty of companies building cheap stuff meaning crap produced and robots who learn the Microsoft, Cisco etc. certification books by heart but have precisely zero ability for structured thinking and creativity. I've worked with these, I know them.

On the other hand, given unlimited funding (i.e. state-funded), I'm sure that the Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

You may actually be surprised at the "cheap" work force. Many Chinese companies in labour intensive industries are actually relocating to Africa because labour costs are on the rise!

I know - but not much in the IT sector, I think.

[THAIPHUKET]

Casualbiker is right

It´s time to throw away the old playbook. Welcome to the new era.

The country with the lowest manufacturing costs, we found, is not China. It’s Indonesia, then India, Mexico, and Thailand. China comes next—with Taiwan’s costs just a tad higher and the U.S.’s a bit more than that, ranking America No. 7 in our study.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-25/china-vs-dot-the-u-dot-s-dot-its-just-as-cheap-to-make-goods-in-the-usa

[Lannig]

Err... the topic was about IT capabilities, not slave unskilled workforce for factories.

Aren't we drifting a bit here?

@Thaiphuket: how about a "Don't use a silly bold and enormous font" button?

Edited June 22, 2016 by Lannig

[THAIPHUKET]

Hint well taken= @Thaiphuket: how about a "Don't use a silly bold and enormous font" button?

​And the subject is IT Chinese capabilities and economic competitiveness in general

to counter the myth of cheap as the only factor

detached from sociological aspects

abstract and therefore unemotional

Edited June 22, 2016 by THAIPHUKET

[Lannig]

Back to the topic of that Chinese supercomputer, in the light of another (now locked) thread started on the subject.

It's just a matter of piling up tens of thousands of cells each containing one of their multi-core (260 cores) RISC processors.

This paper gives some insight: http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-report-2016.pdf

Although the overall computing power obtained is impressive, I see no real technological breakthrough there. The Sunway processor itself has nothing that makes it like a generation ahead of a Xeon Phi CPU (see table 4 in the paper) and the interconnects... well, PCI-E hardly is rocket science.

In the end, it's really the amount of floor space and electrical power you can get...

[ravip]

With a population of over 1.357 billion (2013), is it correct to judge the whole country by a few (comparatively) that one meets on the road?

Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China between 250,000 and 2.24 million years ago. China was a world leader in science and technology until the Ming Dynasty. Ancient Chinese discoveries and inventions, such as papermaking, printing, the compass, and gunpowder (the Four Great Inventions), later became widespread in Asia and Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers...

It cant be all that bad after all, isn't it?

(But of course no one likes someone who steps on ones toes, obviously!!!)

[THAIPHUKET]

Lannig gives a substantive reply http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-report-2016.pdf

Which I have not digested yet but I assume his argument is right, it´s just adding chips, in a way.

But this is nothing new as soon as technological supremacy can be copied the cheaper producer will win.

If Thai farmers let the rice quality drop plus labor becomes expensive, Vietnam will gain market share.

[THAIPHUKET]

Thank you RAVIP. That´s what I love, one thought leading to the next, causing to dig deeper into a subject away from flat statements = Cheap, everything just copied from the West. Hopefully eliminate prejudices

Sorry for spacing!

It is especially important to emphasize how China , the world technological power between 1100 and 1800, made the West’s emergence possible. As early as 1078, China was the world’s major producer of steel (125,000 tons); whereas Britain in 1788 produced 76,000 tons.

China was the world’s leader in technical innovations in textile manufacturing, seven centuries before Britain ’s 18th century “textile revolution”.

In 1588 the largest English ships displaced 400 tons, China ’s 3,000 tons. And so on..........

Military colonization of Asia by the West caused the end

Source= John Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization ( Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press 2004)

A real eye-opener http://goo.gl/nXHeD4

China: Rise, Fall and Re-Emergence as a Global Power

James Petras is a retired Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,

[JaseTheBass]

That´s exactly it

Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

The Will matters not how one gets there.

We used to ridicule with the same arogance Japanese Cars

and where are we today???

Buying Ford.

[Chicog]

That´s exactly it

Chinese are able to do things at least at good as the best we can do in the West.

The Will matters not how one gets there.

We used to ridicule with the same arogance Japanese Cars

and where are we today???

Buying Ford.

Well more like Toyota.

[Chicog]

What a lot of people don't realise is that with so many manufacturers moving production to China, the situation is ripe for the Chinese to steal intellectual property.

I remember when Callaway were stunned at the quality of fake golf clubs on sale in Hong Kong.

It turns out their manufacturing partner in China had set an an entire duplicate factory down the road from the original using all the technology being used in the proper one.

They are the biggest intellectual property thieves on the planet, so it's not unexpected that the products they are producing are near to or equal in quality of the originals.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Chicog

[Jai Dee]

A number of off-topic and flame posts have been removed from this thread.

[JohnnyJazz]

Drive in a Chinese high speed train and if survived, please report back. Thank you very much for your consideration.

I did a couple of time. Fast, reliable, comfortable, on time. Overall a great experience.

And it's not only in computer science that Chinese are distancing their western counterparts

Here an article from Nature : From ancient DNA to neutrinos and neuroscience, top researchers in China are making big impacts — and raising their country’s standing in science ....

http://www.nature.com/news/science-stars-of-china-1.20113?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

[THAIPHUKET]

Very valuable contribution Johnny, the Nature article shows really the huge step taken by Chinese scientists. Such step made possible by the political willpower of the establishment.