(East-West Question) Lu Yutong: How will China's supercomputing affect the world's supercomputing development?
China News Agency, Guangzhou, March 4th: Lu Yutong: How will China's supercomputing affect the world's supercomputing development?
China News Agency reporter Cai Minjie Vedev Xu Qingqing
A supercomputer is a computer specially designed to solve scientific, engineering and industrial problems with super-large scale, large amount of data, and super-complexity.
From the five-generation "Galaxy" series to the two-generation "Tianhe" series of supercomputers, China's supercomputing business has achieved leapfrog development from following, running, and leading.
Lu Yutong, director of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center of Sun Yat-sen University, who participated in and witnessed the development process of China's supercomputing, said in an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Dongxiwen" recently that the demand for supercomputing applications in China is strong. On the one hand, it drives the evolution of China's supercomputing system. On the one hand, it will promote the innovation and development of various industries in China.
In the new era, China's independent technology will further influence the development of the world's supercomputing technology.
The following is a summary of the interview transcript:
China News Service: What role has supercomputers played in China's national economic and social development?
Lu Yutong:
The characteristics of supercomputers are mainly in two aspects: First, the calculation speed is super fast, and it can quickly solve complex problems.
Taking "Tianhe-2" as an example, it calculates for 1 second, which is equivalent to about 1 year for 1.4 billion people in China to calculate at the same time with calculators.
Second, the storage capacity is super large.
"Tianhe No. 2" has a total memory capacity of 1.4PB (1PB=1024TB) and a global shared storage system capacity of 20PB.
The total storage capacity is equivalent to the total of 20,000 1T hard drives. If the storage capacity of "Tianhe No. 2" is used to store digital books, it can store about 100 billion books with 100,000 words.
Supercomputer is a major infrastructure for building an innovative country, a major support platform for solving challenging problems, a multiplier for supporting industrial innovation and development, and a resource pool for information construction.
From space science, earth science, life science, nuclear science, to oil exploration, nuclear power plants, genetic engineering, large-scale equipment design and manufacturing, to traditional industries such as automobiles, ships, and machinery manufacturing, as well as new energy and new materials, microelectronics and optical communications and other emerging industries Industry, to smart cities, e-government, Internet and Internet of Things, big data and cloud computing, these fields are inseparable from the support of supercomputers.
Photo courtesy of the respondents of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center
China News Service reporter: How to evaluate a country's supercomputing ability? At present, what is the overall pattern of global supercomputing development?
Lu Yutong: To
evaluate a country’s supercomputing capabilities, on the one hand, it is to see whether it has the ability to independently develop advanced supercomputing systems, and on the other hand, to see whether the country has first-class supercomputing application capabilities, that is, to accelerate various industries through supercomputing The level of innovation in the field.
Because of the powerful functions and strategic significance of supercomputing, governments around the world attach great importance to the development of supercomputing.
At present, the United States is still the most competitive country in the field of supercomputing. Japan has a relatively high level of development and application of supercomputing systems. Although Europe invests less in the development of supercomputing systems, their supercomputing application capabilities are relatively high. powerful.
In recent years, China's supercomputing systems and applications have achieved rapid development and entered the world's leading ranks.
The trend of alternate leadership among countries in the world of supercomputing will continue for a long time.
China News Service reporter: Please briefly introduce the current development status of supercomputing in China. What are the main factors driving the rapid development of supercomputing in China?
Lu Yutong:
China has always regarded the development of high-performance computing as an important direction in the national science and technology development plan.
At present, China's supercomputing system development capability has reached the world-class level. Two Chinese-made supercomputing systems, "Tianhe No. 2" and "Taihu Light", have ranked first in the world's top 500 supercomputing rankings for ten consecutive times. In the development of a new generation of E-class computing systems, China's progress is also relatively smooth.
In terms of application, China's supercomputing has also made great progress.
Taking the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center as an example, it has initially built a domestic supercomputing innovation service system in recent years, ranking fifth in the TOP500 supercomputing centers with the most application influence, closely following the development and operation of the four major national laboratories in the United States for many years. The multi-field application effect of the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center has also been widely recognized at home and abroad.
The reason why China's supercomputing can achieve leapfrog development in just 30 years is first of all driven by huge demand.
Entering the 21st century, whether it is cutting-edge scientific research, major engineering construction, or industrial technology innovation, there is a huge demand for supercomputing.
What is more important is the spirit and practice of Chinese supercomputing people's hard work, independent innovation, and selfless dedication. From scratch, from weak to strong, the Chinese supercomputing research team has made more efforts and achieved more technological innovations in the same period of time. .
Photo courtesy of the respondents of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center
China News Agency reporter: How is the exchange and interaction between China and foreign countries in the field of supercomputing? What benefits will it bring to the development of supercomputing in China?
Lu Yutong:
International cooperation and exchanges in the field of supercomputing are very important, especially cooperation at the application level of supercomputing.
Foreign supercomputing applications developed earlier than China, and the level is also higher. The exchange and interaction with world-class teams has a good role in promoting the development of domestic supercomputing applications.
International exchange and cooperation is also a very prominent feature of the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center.
On the basis of the strong international influence of "Tianhe-2", the center cooperates with universities, supercomputing centers and scientific research institutions in dozens of countries, including the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Norway, and Singapore. The institution has maintained a long-term cooperative relationship; it has signed strategic cooperation agreements with the Stuttgart Supercomputing Center in Germany, the Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Germany, the Hartley National Supercomputing Center in the United Kingdom, and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center in the United Kingdom.
In addition, "Tianhe-2" has joined SKA, COMET and other large international projects or global scientific projects; at the same time, the center and a number of international partners such as the Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Japan (RIKEN) and the University of Stavanger in Norway have jointly applied for international projects. , and continue to cooperate closely on the research of key application technologies.
Through international exchanges and cooperation, the development of supercomputing applications in China has been more widely recognized, and the supercomputing center has also become a platform for international frontier scientific research cooperation.
Photo courtesy of the respondents of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center
China News Service reporter: At present, China's supercomputing ranks among the top three in the world. How does the development of China's supercomputing contribute to the development of the world economy and science and technology?
Lu Yutong:
The development of supercomputing in China has promoted the advancement of supercomputing technology in the world. For example, the Tianhe team took the lead in proposing the heterogeneous architecture of CPU+GPU, which has now become one of the mainstream supercomputing architectures in the world. The self-developed high-speed interconnection network technology And system software technology has a strong international influence.
In the new era, China's independent technology will further influence the development of the world's supercomputing technology.
There is a strong demand for supercomputing applications in China. While driving the prosperity of China's supercomputing market, it will promote the innovation and development of various industries in China, and will also help the world's economic and social development.
Photo courtesy of the respondents of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center
China News Service reporter: The industry expects that the world's first E-class computer will be released this year. The E-class computer has a faster computing speed. What changes will this leap in computing power bring?
Lu Yutong:
E-class supercomputers refer to supercomputers that can perform tens of billions of double-precision floating-point operations per second, and are recognized by the world as "the next crown of supercomputers".
China will use E-level supercomputing to support a series of super-large-scale calculations and simulations, such as ultra-high-resolution climate and weather forecasting, large-scale aerospace numerical wind tunnels, seismic geological research, oil and gas energy exploration, life sciences and genetic engineering, as well as projects involving the national economy and people's livelihood. , information security government data, medical and health, biological health and other big data analysis and processing, and promote the construction of supercomputing and cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence deep integration of high-performance computing service platform.
For a long time to come, supercomputing will remain the only high-end computing platform, and it will be the focus of intense competition in countries around the world.
(over)
Interviewee Profile:
Lu Yutong is a professor at the School of Computer Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, director of the National Supercomputing Guangzhou Center, and deputy chief designer of Tianhe-2.
The National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou is now one of the supercomputing centers with the largest number of users and the most extensive application fields in the world.