Significance of scientific research of Tianhe-1

Tianhe-1, China's first petascale supercomputer system, was successfully developed by National University of Defense Technology. Tianhe No.1 ranks first in the top 2009 100 published by China High Performance Computer Organization today.

Experts believe that the birth of "Tianhe No.1" is another major innovation in the research and development of strategic high-tech and large-scale basic scientific and technological equipment in China, which has achieved a leap from billions of times to trillions of times in China's independent research and development of supercomputers, making China the second country in the world to develop petaflops of supercomputer systems after the United States.

With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and in close cooperation with Tianjin Binhai New Area, "Tianhe No.1" is an important achievement of the national 863 plan "petaflops high-performance computer system development" undertaken by the Computer College of National University of Defense Technology. The system has broken through a series of key technologies, such as multi-array configurable collaborative parallel architecture, high-speed extensible interconnection communication, efficient heterogeneous collaborative computing, security control based on isolation, virtual network computing support, fault tolerance of multi-level large-scale system, and comprehensive control of system energy consumption. The peak performance of the system reaches 1.206 trillion double-precision floating-point operations per second, the total memory capacity is 98TB, and the peer-to-peer communication bandwidth is 40Gb per second, * * enjoying the disk capacity.

Supercomputers are the strategic commanding heights in the world's high-tech field and an important symbol of scientific and technological competitiveness and comprehensive national strength. All major countries regard it as an important infrastructure for national scientific and technological innovation and invest huge sums of money in research and development. The successful appearance of China's first petascale supercomputer system is another major breakthrough in the development of high-performance computer technology in China and another important achievement in the informatization construction of the country and the army. It provides an important means to solve major challenging problems in China's economy and science and technology, and has important strategic significance to enhance comprehensive national strength. Tianhe-1 is suitable for large-scale scientific and engineering calculations. The University of National Defense Science and Technology is cooperating closely with Tianjin Binhai New Area, and Tianhe-1 is widely used in petroleum exploration data processing, biomedical research, aerospace equipment development, resource investigation and satellite remote sensing data processing, financial engineering data analysis, weather forecast, climate forecast, numerical simulation of marine environment, short-term and imminent earthquake prediction, new material development and design, civil engineering design, theoretical calculation of basic science and other fields.

According to reports, "Tianhe No.1" will serve as the business host of the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center jointly established by Tianjin Binhai New Area and National Defense Science and Technology University. It will be open to the society, realize resource sharing, provide supercomputing services at home and abroad, promote the development of high-tech service industry and high-end information industry, and strive to build three platforms of high-tech service, industrial technology innovation and talent gathering and training to provide high-tech support for economic and social development.

The Computer College of National University of Defense Technology is an important base for the development of high-performance computers in China, and was awarded the honorary title of "Pioneer of Science and Technology Research" by the Central Military Commission. They are always close to the major strategic needs of the country and the army. The successfully developed "Yinhe" series of high-performance computers have played an important role in the key areas of national and national defense construction and made outstanding contributions to strengthening the army and rejuvenating the country. The vast number of scientific and technological personnel involved in R&D indicated that they should thoroughly study a series of important expositions made by General Secretary Hu Jintao on improving the capability of independent innovation and building an innovative country, have the confidence and courage to climb the peak of world science and technology, vigorously carry forward the "Galaxy Spirit", unite and cooperate, and strive to promote the innovative development of China's high-performance computer industry at a higher starting point.

"When I heard the news that Tianhe-1 was successfully developed, I was shocked. We originally expected that the trillion floating-point operations of computers would not appear in China until the end of 20 10. " Zhang Yunquan, a researcher at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, "This is a new milestone in the development of high-performance computers in China." High performance computers are also called supercomputers or supercomputers. In the process of increasing the computing speed of supercomputers, trillions of times is an insurmountable "bottleneck". As early as the 1990s, the United States put forward the goal of making petaflops of supercomputers, which was not realized until 2007. As of June 2009, there were only three petaflops in the world. "The international computer community believes that upgrading from billions to trillions is a qualitative change, which can not be achieved simply by expanding the scale, but requires architectural changes." Dou Wenhua, a professor at National University of Defense Technology, said that Tianhe-1 adopted a new multi-array configurable collaborative parallel architecture, thus improving the system performance. Dou Wenhua believes that this architecture has the ability to build the next order of magnitude, that is, 10 trillion computers, which will become the mainstream structure of the next generation of high-tech computers. The emergence of computers in trillions of times has provided a broader platform for the implementation of China's high-tech plan. "The actual demand in some fields has exceeded the capabilities of current supercomputers." Dou Wenhua said that climate prediction, environmental control, aircraft design, system biology and other fields all need petaflops or even higher performance computers. Therefore, after the "Tianhe No.1" is put into use, it will definitely promote the speed of scientific research. Is "China First" with seven technologies and four characteristics equal to the sum of 10 trillion floating-point operations? Zhou Xingming, an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the efficiency of the system is by no means a simple superposition of the calculation efficiency of each unit. "If a trillion-dollar system is directly stacked with a high-performance microprocessor, the power will be amazing, and users may not even be able to pay the electricity bill. At the same time, the reliability of the machine is very low and it cannot work stably. On the surface, there are many devices that work, but the result is' three monks have no water to eat'. " Zhou Xingming said that "Tianhe No.1" adopted seven key technologies to make the result of "one plus one" as close as possible to "two", thus giving full play to the overall efficiency of the machine. These seven technologies include: multi-array configurable collaborative parallel architecture, high-speed extended interconnection communication technology, efficient heterogeneous collaborative computing technology, isolation-based security control technology, virtualized network computing support technology, multi-level large-scale system fault tolerance technology and system energy consumption comprehensive control technology. Zhou Xingming said that due to the adoption of a series of innovative technologies, this computer has four characteristics:

-High performance. Whether the peak performance is 1206 trillion times or the measured performance is 563. 1 trillion times, it ranks first in China and first-class in the world.

-Low energy consumption. Energy consumption is the computational efficiency created per watt of electricity. At present, the energy efficiency of Tianhe-1 is 430 million operations per watt, which is equivalent to the number one American Roadrunner in the Top500 (the world's top 500 supercomputers) published in June 2009. According to the ranking of Green500 (Global Top 500 Green Supercomputers) published in June 2009, Tianhe No.1 can rank fifth.

-High security. Tianhe realizes the mutual isolation of data and work information between different users. For users, it is equivalent to renting a safe from the bank, and the key is in their own hands.

-Easy to use. The "fool-like" operation interface and routine operations such as menu and mouse make the use of the machine simple. At the same time, Tianhe, as an internationally standardized supercomputer, can run various programs in various industries, and there is no compatibility problem. According to the project plan, "Tianhe No.1" will settle in Tianjin Binhai New Area from the end of 2009 to 20 10, and become the business host of the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center, providing supercomputing services at home and abroad. Li Nan, director of Tianhe Engineering Office, said that Tianhe-1 will achieve three major functions after it is put into use: First, as a global public scientific research facility providing supercomputing services, Tianhe will be open to users at home and abroad. No matter where you are, users can use Tianhe for scientific calculation through the Internet. Second, as an industry-driven platform, the most advanced information technology concentrated in Tianhe will be gradually transferred to other industries, thus solving various problems in national and social development; Third, Tianhe, as a platform to attract talents, will further gather the world's cutting-edge technical talents and make more contributions to the sustainable development of national economy and world science and technology.

China's supercomputing users are mainly concentrated in oil exploration, weather forecast, basic research and other fields. At the end of last century, supercomputers have been popularized in automobile, construction, animation and other industries in western developed countries. The demand for high-performance computers in China has reached its peak. Tianhe will be used for oil exploration data processing, biomedical research, aerospace equipment development, resource exploration and satellite remote sensing data processing, financial engineering data analysis, numerical simulation of ecological power and pollution around Bohai Sea, theoretical calculation of basic science and so on. At the same time as the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center, there is also a center in Shenzhen. These two national supercomputing centers, the South and the North, will become important engines of China's high-tech development. The application of supercomputers is closely related to the lives of ordinary people, and the most common weather forecast is the result of supercomputing. With the further expansion of supercomputer service capacity in the future, it is likely that a huge supercomputer service industry will be born to provide services for individual users. As far as algebraic calculation is concerned, "Tianhe-1" can perform 1206 trillion calculations in one second, while people can only perform operations once or so. However, remembering each other's looks is an image recognition job that one can complete in an instant, but the computer has to go through an extremely complicated parallel computing process.

Conceptual explanation

The peak speed is 4700 trillion times.

The peak operation speed of Tianhe-1 is 4,700 trillion times. By comparison, the operation of Tianhe-1 is 1 hour, which is equivalent to China10.3 billion people for more than 340 years. "Tianhe No.1" takes 1 day, which is equivalent to 1 dual-core high-end desktop computer for more than 620 years.

The storage capacity is 2000 trillion bytes.

The storage capacity of Tianhe-1 is 2PB, or 2 trillion bytes. In contrast, 1 Chinese character has an average of 2 bytes. Tianhe No.1 can store 1000 trillion Chinese characters online, which is equivalent to storing1000,000 books and1000,000 words.

The 24-hour power consumption is 65438+ million kWh.

The total power consumption of "Tianhe No.1" is 4.04 MW, that is, it consumes 4040 kWh per hour, and the power consumption of 24-hour full-load operation is close to 65438+ million kWh. This figure is amazing, but in fact, "Tianhe No.1" is a relatively energy-saving and green supercomputer among supercomputers. After calculation, its energy efficiency is only lower than that of IBM blue gene system, which ranks first in the world at present.

Tianhe No.1 has a total weight of 160.27 tons and consists of 140 cabinets, covering an area of about 700 square meters and a total weight of 160 tons. When you stand in front of Tianhe No.1, you will find it magnificent and shocking. But in fact, "Tianhe-1" is one of the trillions of supercomputers in the world (mostly covering an area of nearly 1,000 square meters).