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NV owns the fastest computer in the world title

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Smells like a publicity stunt to me.


Chinese grad student: I have an idea... let's try and get the government to build us a supercomputer

NV: I'll sell you video cards heavily discounted, if you make sure they end up in the fastest supercomputer

Chinese government: Hmm, we could build a supercomputer faster than any in the West... we save money and China looks great
 
Yuriman said:
Smells like a publicity stunt to me.
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Yep it's not as if supercomputers were actually used anywhere else, Ati/Intel/Amd/whoever in the past always liked to note who had built the most powerful supercomputer and the US and Europe have dozens of those - just a publicity stunt for China and Nvidia.

And sure they got some rebates for the GPUs (and CPUs), like everyone else in past similar projects..
 
Yuriman said:
Chinese government: Hmm, we could build a supercomputer faster than any in the West... we save money and China looks great
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I honestly think they started out with "make china look great by building the fastest super computer", and then went shopping around for who will give them the greatest discount.
 
Yuriman said:
Smells like a publicity stunt to me.
Click to expand...

Pretty much the only reason you publicize your linpack results as needed to get Top500 ranked is for the publicity...otherwise you'd run the test (hardware check) and keep the results to yourself.

You can bet the IT at the NSA do this, and probably had cryptography crackers that ran at 2.5PF 10yrs ago.
 
Genx87 said:
Uh huh, and what general pupose computing will this system be running?
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This system? I Don't know, that's why I was mentioning software. All the theoretical FLOPS and MIPS in the world is useless without software.

I was talking in general, the hype that HPC equates to GPU is a fallacy.
 
So what is your complaint then? These systems are built with a purpose in mind and with software written for them. China wouldnt have built a super computer based around Tesla if the workload they are expecting to perform on it would be slower than using a CPU.
 
Meh. Chinese does not have to care about any environmental regulation etc - remember Oak Ridge and Fermi, much-touted by NV?
There's a reason why it didn't get anywhere - Nvidia couldn't stay within the thermal envelope with its monstrous design... but it's not a problem with comrades like the PSC (Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China) who wave their hands and regulation exemptions are immediately in effect.
 
T2k said:
Meh. Chinese does not have to care about any environmental regulation etc - remember Oak Ridge and Fermi, much-touted by NV?
There's a reason why it didn't get anywhere - Nvidia couldn't stay within the thermal envelope with its monstrous design... but it's not a problem with comrades like the PSC (Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China) who wave their hands and regulation exemptions are immediately in effect.
Click to expand...

If you read the article.

According to Nvidia, a 2.507PetaFLOPS system built entirely with CPUs would consume more than 12 megawatts (MWs). Thanks to the use of GPUs in a heterogeneous computing environment, Tianhe-1A consumes only 4.04MW, making it 3 times more power efficient.
Click to expand...

What produces more heat and requires more coal plants to power it? 12 or 4 Megawatts?
 
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Genx87 said:
So what is your complaint then? These systems are built with a purpose in mind and with software written for them. China wouldnt have built a super computer based around Tesla if the workload they are expecting to perform on it would be slower than using a CPU.
Click to expand...

I think the primary workload is weather prediction. of course, massive floating point machines are great at stuff like nuclear detonation simulations, aeronautical simulations etc.

T2k said:
Meh. Chinese does not have to care about any environmental regulation etc - remember Oak Ridge and Fermi, much-touted by NV?
There's a reason why it didn't get anywhere - Nvidia couldn't stay within the thermal envelope with its monstrous design... but it's not a problem with comrades like the PSC (Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China) who wave their hands and regulation exemptions are immediately in effect.
Click to expand...

I think they probably built a small nuclear reactor next door just to power that monster. But as I understand performance (tflop)/dollar tends to be excellent for massively parallel supercomputers, I mean should be better than desktops.
 
nvidia fab manager checks his logs, thinks to himself "hmmm, that number is very close to the number of fail chips we had in the last couple months... how coincidental...
 
T2k said:
Meh. Chinese does not have to care about any environmental regulation etc
Click to expand...
Guess how much more Co2 per capita china produces compared to the US. Correct answer: Around 1/4.

But at least the rest of the statement is true, because as we all know there's no way economic considerations would influence environmental jurisdiction.. 😀

Umn that turned into a rather strange P&N discussion here
 
T2k said:
Meh. Chinese does not have to care about any environmental regulation etc - remember Oak Ridge and Fermi, much-touted by NV?
There's a reason why it didn't get anywhere - Nvidia couldn't stay within the thermal envelope with its monstrous design... but it's not a problem with comrades like the PSC (Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China) who wave their hands and regulation exemptions are immediately in effect.
Click to expand...


I vaguely remember the oakridge was going to use fermi for their computing. Did this ever happan. Its been a year since the PR statement, but I cant find any news on its completion.
 
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