Xinhua News Agency, Tianjin, July 26. Topic: China-made exascale supercomputing technology achieves new breakthrough. "Tianhe-3" E-class prototype completes development and deployment
Xinhua News Agency reporters Yang Weicheng and Mao Zhenhua
Recently, news came from the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center located in the development zone of Tianjin Binhai New Area that my country's self-developed new generation of exascale supercomputer – "Tianhe-3" E-class prototype has completed the development and deployment, and successfully passed the sub-item acceptance. The prototype system uses three domestic independent high-performance computing and communication chips. On this basis, the "Tianhe-3" supercomputer is expected to be successfully developed in 2020.
Continue to tackle difficulties and climb new heights
"Supercomputers have become the core driver of a country's information technology innovation, the strong support for the improvement of the country's comprehensive national strength, and the rapid development of high-end information technology." Liu Guangming, director of the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center, said.
An exascale supercomputer is an exascale supercomputer. At present, the development plan of the new generation of exascale supercomputer is the commanding height of international high-end information technology innovation and competition. Both the United States and Japan have proposed development plans for exascale supercomputers, which are planned to be completed in 2020 or later.
my country's supercomputing aspirations to the world's laurels started from the "Tianhe-1" deployed at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin. Along the way, there have been inheritance and development of "Tianhe-2" and "Sunway Taihu Light". Facing the new trend of supercomputing development, in 2016, the Ministry of Science and Technology combined with the "13th Five-Year Plan" development plan and supported by the national key research and development plan, and began to launch my country's E-class computer development plan in two phases. The first phase is mainly for the research on "key technologies of E-class computers", and the development of three E-class prototypes is arranged, and the second phase is for the specific development of E-class computers.
The National University of Defense Technology and the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin jointly undertook the development project of the "Tianhe-3 E-Class Prototype System". After more than two years of continuous key technology research and breakthroughs, the prototype system was successfully developed and deployed at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin. On July 22, it successfully passed the acceptance of the sub-projects organized by the High-Tech Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and will gradually enter the open application stage.
Innovation first to achieve self-control
Compared with the previous generation of supercomputers, "Tianhe-3" is an epoch-making advanced technology work. It has achieved rich technical innovations, which have been vividly reflected in the prototype.
"Decades of accumulation and continuous technological innovation have achieved overall independent controllability in the key technologies of the 'Tianhe' supercomputer." Liu Guangming said that in the implementation of the "Tianhe-3 E-Class Prototype System" project, the team independently designed three chips: "Matron" many-core processor (Matrix-2000+), high-speed interconnection controller, and interconnection interface controller; designed four types of computing, storage and service nodes, and more than ten types of printed circuit boards; Hardware subsystems such as parallel storage, service processing, monitoring and diagnosis, and infrastructure, and software subsystems such as system operation, parallel development, application support, and comprehensive management.
Relying on comprehensive technological innovations, the "Tianhe-3 E-Class Prototype System" has realized a flexible architecture that can adapt to the multi-application requirements of scientific computing and data processing, and has broken through the high-performance computing node technology with a tripartite balance of computing, memory, access, and communication.
The breakthrough of the key technology on the prototype supported the development of the "Tianhe-3" exascale complete machine system with a design scheme that balances computing, memory access, and communication performance. In the future, "Tianhe-3" will fully upgrade the computing and interconnection communication core chips that have been designed and produced, further improve the hierarchical storage system that can support exabyte (EB)-level massive data storage, and optimize the flexible architecture suitable for high-performance computing and efficient big data processing. In 2 to 3 years, it is estimated that around 2020, a fully independent new generation of "Tianhe-3" E-class supercomputer with international leading level will be built. By then, its computing power will be 200 times higher than that of "Tianhe-1", realizing a qualitative leap.
Applications drive the development of many fields
In Liu Guangming's view, the new-generation domestic supercomputer with excellent performance is "both good-looking and useful." It will help solve the problem of my country's high-performance computing capabilities, and provide an irreplaceable and important technical means for solving challenging problems in the fields of my country's national economy and scientific research. At the same time, it can directly improve the scientific and technological innovation capabilities of scientific research institutes and enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises.
"National Supercomputing Tianjin Center is the first supercomputing center in the world that relies on high-tech services to achieve a balance of payments." Meng Xiangfei, director of the Application R&D Department of the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center, introduced that the "Tianhe-1" used by the center is already the most widely used supercomputer in the world. It runs more than 1,400 computing tasks every day.
"Tianhe-1" has accumulatively supported more than 1,300 major projects such as major national science and technology projects and national key research and development plans, involving more than 2 billion yuan in funds, and has obtained more than 2,000 important national, provincial and ministerial awards and publications. Through advanced product design, advanced process optimization, advanced material research and development, etc., the average annual added economic benefits for enterprises exceed 3 billion yuan.
Meng Xiangfei said that in the future, the National Supercomputing Tianjin Center will rely on "Tianhe-3" to build a high-performance computing service platform that integrates supercomputing and cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence.
The center will further lead the innovation and development of Tianjin's smart industry. With the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Big Data Collaborative Processing Center" as the carrier, it will connect with Xiong'an New Area and fully serve the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative innovation, becoming an important engine for the innovation and development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
