Getting Up to Speed The Future of Supercomputing (2005) / Chapter Skim
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7 Supercomputing Abroad
7 Supercomputing Abroad
Pages 180-191
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From page 180... ...
However, the United States clearly dominates the field. Of the TOP500 systems in June 2004, 255, or 51 percent, are installed in the United States, which also has 56 percent of the total compute power of the systems on that list.
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From page 181... ...
The software stack of supercomputing systems used worldwide (operating systems, compilers, tools, libraries, application codes, etc.) was also largely developed in the United States, with significant contributions from researchers in other countries.
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From page 182... ...
Many are common to the United States and Japan, for example, climate modeling, earthquake simulation, and biosystems. However, Japan does not have the kind of defense missions, such as stockpile stewardship, that have historically been drivers for U.S.
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From page 183... ...
In the current Japanese economic and political climate, it has become harder to allocate significant funds on a continuous basis for large, innovative projects in HPC. Similar pressures exist in the United States.
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From page 184... ...
As shown in Figure 7.3, the sustained performance achieved by application codes is impressive: The ES achieved 26.58 Tflops on a global atmospheric code; 14.9 Tflops on a threedimensional fluid simulation code for fusion written in HPF; and 16.4 Tflops on a turbulence code. The ES, with its focus on earth sciences, was one of the first missionoriented projects of the Science and Technology Agency.6 Although the 6MEXT took over the ES after the merger of the Ministry of Education and the Science and Technology Agency.
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From page 185... ...
U.S. NCAR is also mission-oriented for earth sciences, it is perceived that in the United States "mission-oriented" usually implies "national security." The ES also might turn out to be a singular event: MEXT officials with whom the committee met stated that as of March 2004 there were no plans to build topical supercomputing centers in support of Japanese priority science areas (biotechnology, nanotechnology, the environment, and IT)
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From page 186... ...
The United States made an even larger investment in HPC under the ASC program, but the money was not spent on a single platform. Other important differences are these: · The ES was developed for basic research and is shared internationally, whereas the ASC program is driven by national defense and may be used only for domestic missions.
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From page 187... ...
, which involves porting and running the NCAR CCSM on the ES, and a joint research effort with scientists from the California Institute of Technology in earthquake simulation.8 Other Japanese Centers Other large supercomputer installations in Japan are found in university supercomputer centers, in national laboratories, and in industry. In the June 2004 TOP500 list, Japan appears again in 7th place with a Fujitsu system at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN)
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From page 188... ...
The system was assembled and installed at the Shanghai Supercomputing Center by the Chinese Dawning company.9 This company markets server and workstation technologies developed by the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS-ICT) , the National Research Center for Intelligent Computing Systems (NCIC)
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From page 189... ...
While some of the funding under these headings supports the use of supercomputing systems, it is quite clear that HPC is driven in Europe by national policies rather than EU initiatives. United Kingdom The United Kingdom is the largest European supercomputer user, with two large academic centers -- the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center (EPCC)
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From page 190... ...
(NCAR in the United States has also moved to an IBM system, but unwillingly, as a result of the antidumping case against NEC; see Box 8.1.) On the other hand, many weather and climate centers, including the U.K.
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From page 191... ...
APPLICATION SOFTWARE Generally, the type of research performed in these various centers is similar to the research performed in the United States; similar software is being used, and there is significant sharing of technology. However, both in Japan and in Europe there seem to be more targeted efforts to develop high-performance application software to support industry.
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