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怎样看待美国最新超算 Summit( 三 )



Sitting in Singapore, I am in the unusual position of having visited the Chinese #1 and #2 supercomputer sites and met with their designers, and also being familiar with the usual TOP500 sites in the US and what some of their plans are.
由于我在新加坡，我参观了中国第一和第二的超算，并且跟他们的设计师会了面，这很不同寻常，同时我也对美国的的一般TOP500的超算和他们的计划很熟。


As a citizen of the USA, I find the disparity discouraging. The Chinese already have a 1 exaflops system in their pipeline, and their designs are excellent and getting better. By the time the USA ekes out a 200 petaflops system, the Chinese will almost certainly have one already in operation that runs circles around it.
作为美国公民，我觉得这种差距很让人丧气。中国人已经在开发一个1E的机器，他们的设计非常出色，而且越来越好。美国人把200P的机器弄出来的时候中国人肯定就已经把那个1E的机器弄的差不多了，在跑测试。
While the USA economy grew slowly from 2001 to 2016, China’s economy grew very quickly and in some specific areas they actually surpassed the USA, supercomputing being one of them. Their supercomputer engineers did a lot of things right:
当美国经济从2001到2016缓慢增长的时候，中国经济增长得非常快，而且在某些特定领域已经超过美国，超算就是其中之一。他们的超算工程师做了很多对的事情：
They were willing to spend the large amount of money required to compete in this arena.他们愿意在这个领域竞争，投入了很多钱。They were not wedded to the x86 processor mentality, and instead created a hardware-software stack (mostly based on the Alpha processor and its associated software that they had licensed) that delivers significantly more speed per watt of power. Alpha processors achieve about twice as many instructions per clock as do x86 processors.他们没有局限于x86处理器，相比之下他们做了一个硬件-软件集合体（基于他们之前买授权的Alpha处理器和相关软件），这套东西能够输出比x86多得多的每瓦算力。Alpha处理器能够处理相当于x86两倍的每秒指令。They took a holistic approach to the physical design, from the building structure to the cooling system to the custom cabinet design, instead of restricting themselves to easily-available and low-cost solutions to those challenges.他们全盘考虑了硬件设计，从建筑结构到冷却系统到定制的机柜设计，而不是局限于很容易搞到的和低成本的解决方案。They bought or licensed USA technologies and picked out the best ideas, then combined them with shrewd ideas of their own.他们买了或者拿到了美国技术的授权，挑出最好的点子，与他们自己的好点子结合在一起。I should probably note that my colleague Jack Dongarra has written that Taihu Light is not based on the Alpha processor. With all due respect, he should ask one of his Mandarin-speaking graduate students to read the Taihu Light literature that has not been translated into English. The use of Alpha appears in the original, but not in the English translation… I am surrounded by bilingual Singaporeans who can confirm this! There may have been sensitivity that the designers would be accused of ripping off USA technology, so they de-emphasize that aspect of their design. They shouldn’t. There was easily enough innovation in the Taihu Light to earn the designers not just one, but two Gordon Bell Prizes.


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