Mainland Magic overtakes Japan in supercomputer race
China has overtaken Japan to become Asia's leading market for high-performance computing systems, just seven years after mainland manufacturers first started building commercial supercomputers.
The latest survey of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers, announced last week in Germany, showed the mainland had 21 ranked systems, up from 15 in November last year, to surpass the 15 from Japan.
Complex computing tasks such as meteorological modelling, human-genome mapping, nuclear-blast simulation and energy exploration are typically tackled by supercomputers, which include room-sized machines and clusters of connected high-performance servers.
The Top500 list, which is issued twice a year by a group of specialist researchers, confers bragging rights on the ranked supercomputer users and their technology suppliers. The global rankings, based on the Linpack benchmark that measures processor speed and scalability, also serve as a valuable tool for tracking trends in supercomputer performance and architectures.
The 33rd edition of the Top500 list ranked Dawning Information Industry's Magic Cube system in the Shanghai Supercomputer Centre, at No 15 and Lenovo Group's DeepComp 7000 at the Chinese Academy of Science, at No 31.
The Magic Cube, an updated version of the Dawning 5000A system, is described by the Top500 researchers as 'the largest system which can be operated with the Windows HPC 2008 operating system'.
China has steadily climbed the Top500 rankings, according to researchers. The mainland had one top-ranked supercomputer in 1995 and a high of 28 systems included in the June 2006 list.
Over the past decade, Japan was recognised by researchers as the biggest consumer of high-performance computers in Asia. The country had a high of 111 ranked supercomputers in 1993, but that position has declined over the years.
NEC's Earth Simulator, which was built to run global climate models and was the world's fastest supercomputer from 2002 to 2004, fell to No 22 in the latest Top500 ranking.
Researchers, however, noted that the United States remains the leading consumer of high-performance computers, with 291 of the top 500 systems, including the top two in the list. Europe's share included 145 systems, while Asia had 49 ranked supercomputers.
'Lenovo is proud to land on the global Top500 list and will continue to pursue development in this area,' said Arthur Wei, the vice-president overseeing this product segment at the mainland's largest computer manufacturer. 'High-performance computers complement our personal computer business, allowing us to better serve corporate customers.'
The gaming, financial services, electronics manufacturing, transport and logistics, utilities and energy sectors are regarded as some of the key fields where supercomputers are used on the mainland.
Lenovo was the first mainland computer manufacturer to release a commercial supercomputer in 2002, with its DeepComp 1800 system. The company in 2007 sold a supercomputer to the AT&T Williams racing team, which used the system in its wind-tunnel simulations in Britain.
In March 2007, the Chinese Electronics Standardisation Association started a process to set standards on the manufacture of supercomputers, with an eye towards helping mainland companies become suppliers of high-powered computers to the developing world.
Market analyst firm International Data Corp forecast demand for high-performance computers would be worth US$15 billion by 2011.
