(Economic Observation) With soft and hard, China's advanced computing makes up for "ecological shortcomings"
China News Service, Beijing, August 27 (Reporter Liu Yuying) China's advanced computing has ranked among the top in the world in terms of hardware, but there are still large gaps in applications, ecology, and talent development. China is speeding up to make up for these shortcomings.
Advanced computing is the cornerstone of the new generation of information technology industry. Advanced computing, which integrates multiple computing technologies and services such as supercomputing, intelligent computing, and quantum computing, will become a new driving force for high-quality economic development.
In 2018, the construction of the National Advanced Computing Industry Innovation Center was launched in Tianjin. The center is led by Sugon, a number of industrial upstream and downstream enterprises, scientific research institutes and well-known universities as the core unit. At present, the National Advanced Computing Industry Innovation Center has been deployed in Beijing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Qingdao, and Hefei.
Chi Xuebin, deputy director of the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with reporters at the closing battle of the first Chinese Academy of Sciences "Pilot Cup" Parallel Computing Application Grand Prix this week. Advanced computing can be applied in some industrial fields as well as scientific research. Play a role, such as in the design and manufacture of traditional airplanes and automobiles, automobile appearance design, and crash tests can now be completed by computers.
Enterprises in traditional industries such as manufacturing, medical care, retail, and energy use advanced computing to carry out automation, informatization, intelligence, and energy-saving transformations, which can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, improve efficiency, and promote industrial transformation and upgrading.
"But the prerequisite is to have the corresponding software, which is also urgently needed." Chi Xuebin said that most of the software used by enterprises or scientific research institutes are still from abroad, and the corresponding software is being independently developed in China. This will take a certain amount of time.
The platform provided by the competition is China's domestic advanced computing platform and a complete heterogeneous programming environment. Chi Xuebin said that in recent years, China has been among the top in the world in terms of advanced computer development, but there is still a certain gap in application and talent team building.
Li Guojie, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that as a whole, China's advanced level calculations are several generations behind the international advanced level, and it will take a long time to make up for the shortcomings. China should adopt the technical route of "complementing the hard with soft and hard", vigorously develop software technology represented by parallel computing, to make up for the lack of hardware to a certain extent.
"A good algorithm can increase computing efficiency dozens of times, and can even drive this industry," Li Guojie said.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences "Pioneer Cup" Parallel Computing Application Grand Prix is committed to promoting the development of basic computer software and breakthrough innovations in important application fields.
According to reports, the Grand Prix produced nearly 100 innovative applications of transplantation and optimization results, involving cross-applications in more than 20 fields such as life sciences, material simulation, computational chemistry, physics, astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, petroleum, and geology.
Special awards for "anti-epidemic" were urgently added to the Grand Prix. An application project submitted by a participating team from Lanzhou University can shorten the development cycle of new coronary pneumonia drugs. This result has been accepted by the top international bioinformatics journal "Bioinformatics Bulletin".
Chi Xuebin said that China still has certain shortcomings in the training of computing talents. Advanced computing application software talents need interdisciplinary backgrounds, starting points and requirements are relatively high, such talents are still relatively lacking.
This competition has 601 players from more than 200 key universities, scientific research institutions, and well-known companies, and nearly 500 teams actively participated. This has played a positive role in cultivating talents.
This year, the Ministry of Science and Technology stated that it will further increase the research and development of cutting-edge technologies and support for key core technologies, including advanced computing, core software, and broadband communications.
The ecological construction of domestic computing platforms is also crucial. "The development of software is not overnight, but a long-term accumulation process. It may take another ten or eight years, and it may have a brand new look," said Chi Xuebin. (Finish)