High-Performance computing: The value lies in making computers for Applications

This year's development of a high-performance computer called "Nebula" in the 35th session of the global supercomputer "TOP500", with up to 3000 trillion times per second (3PFlops) of the system peak, As well as 1.271 trillion times per second measured Linpack value speed, won the world's second best results, officially become the world's 3rd test performance of tens of millions of billions of supercomputers. And October in Shandong, "2011 China High performance computer TOP100 rankings", Dawn again by 35% of the market share for two consecutive years to win the Chinese High-performance computer market share of the first ranking.

Recently, we had an interview with Nie Hua, senior vice president of the dawn, when it came to the performance of the top list, Nie Hua said: The top selection is not the most comprehensive when it comes to the comprehensive ability of a machine. In the selection of the criteria for the ultimate optimization of the machine, only the performance of the machine in a certain area of the ability, but a reference to the characteristics of the value. Nie Hua that the real value is to do computers for applications, not for rankings.

Dawn Senior Vice President Nie Hua

High performance computing and cloud computing

The development of dawning in high-performance computing also represents China's performance in the field of High-performance computing. Nie Hua that the accumulation of high-performance computing can be a good combination of the cloud computing that is now widely concerned. Although High-performance computing is a tightly coupled design architecture, cloud computing is loosely coupled at the infrastructure level, dynamically allocating resource loads, but the services that provide the computing power of large amounts of data are the same. Cluster computing is the lowest coupling degree in traditional high-performance computing, and the application of cloud computing is very similar to cluster computing.

High-performance computing starts with specialized parts and networks in the development process. From this point of view, high-performance computers used for cloud computing is not a good choice, because cloud computing itself is a change in the operating model, focus on the cost, hope to be able to use the distributed Low-cost computer to form a dynamically allocated pool of resources, so as to have higher utilization and operational value. "From a purely technical point of view, the relationship between many of the technical viewpoints of cloud computing and high-performance computing is quite tight," Nie Hua said: "Cloud computing is built on a distributed network, but it also wants to solve larger business problems with a dataset, a computational set of patterns." Many of the technical hotspots involved in cloud computing are also the integration of some technologies in traditional high-performance computing, such as computing and data processing performance, and network communication performance. What's different is that cloud computing focuses more on the application-oriented experience. “

"Even in a cloud computing environment, you'll find that dealing with massive amounts of data is still a problem that needs to be addressed today," Nie Hua said. "The dawn has been well accumulated and integrated with cloud computing in the context of years of in-depth research into traditional high-performance computing, Cloud computing is the continuation and inheritance of high-performance computing for years of research. In addition, the dawn is also focusing on the new technology derived from cloud computing hot spots. For example, virtualization and distributed computing technology based on wider networks, parallel processing of larger amounts of data, and the operation of cloud computing, the Pay-as-you-go operating model is the continuation and challenge of high-performance computing.

Cloud Computing Center with a large scale of urban cloud

Although the concept of cloud computing is now deeply rooted, but sometimes also have to admit, cloud computing has become a kind of propaganda way in some degree, the starting point of many promotion is not really to bring value to the user to design, Nie Hua also touched to talk about what he observes now some examples of the manufacturer, In fact, it is the banner of cloud computing to sell their products, and not really for the user to consider building to reduce costs and improve efficiency of the central platform. "Dawn hopes to be a solution provider, in addition to being a server provider." Actively build the city Cloud Computing center, become a veritable cloud computing service provider. “

The city cloud is a kind of regional cloud, through the establishment and integration of a city's computing, storage, network, security, application and other IT resources, for a certain range of government, citizens, industry enterprises and institutions to provide a unified cloud computing services delivery of the city's large IT infrastructure. In such an application model, cloud computing will really become a city's infrastructure, like water and electricity, can be used on demand. The dawn hopes that the city cloud can be built into a cluster of cloud computing centers, creating a broader scale effect.