The latest global supercomputer ranking is going to be published at the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) in Germany. Sources say that the TC4000A developed by China Dawning Information Industry Company is likely to be listed among the top ten.

Supercomputer developed against embargo and blockade

China's High Performance Computer (HPC) is absolutely realized against the embargo and blockade imposed by some developed countries.

US embargo on China started early when the People's Republic of China was established. Approval by the government was a must if the US companies wanted to export supercomputers to China.

When the Sino-US relations began to ease off in 1969, the US gradually relaxed the trade embargo on China. In the middle of the 1970s, China requested the US for purchasing a high-speed computer. However, it was stranded even after many years. In 1985, major western countries established the Coordinating Committee on Export Control (COCOM) to limit the technological export to countries like China. But even when the COCOM began to break up in 1994 with various countries starting to loosen restrictions on their export to China the United States remained still very tough on it.

Supercomputer is a symbol of the comprehensive strength of a country and this has always been an arena monopolized by the US and Japan.

However, what went against the expectation of the US and Japan was that, as early as in September 1959, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) had already succeeded in developing China's first large computer: computer 104 for general purposes. It played an important role in the theoretic design and research of China's first atom bomb. But, with an operation rate of only 10000 floating points per second (Flops), it's very incapable so far as its functions are concerned. In order to verify some key statistics, researchers such as Deng Jiaxian had to rely on the hand-winding computer and ancient calculator as abacus.

On February 28, 2003, 74-year-old Jin Yilian, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and expert in HPC, was awarded national top science and technology award in 2002. Jin Yilian was the leader in research on Shenwei computer. At the time when he received the award, a batch of heroes has already emerged on the honor roll of the HPC.

In 1983, "Yinhe I" supercomputer, with a performance of 100 million Flops, was successfully developed. In 1993, China's supercomputer "Yinhe II", the first one with at 10 trillion floating point operations per second (TFlops) passed appraisal, was listed into China's top ten scientific and technological achievements in 1992, and awarded first-grade national scientific and technological award. After that, "Yinhe III" paralleled supercomputer was successfully developed, received the first-grade award of national scientific and technological progress (top-ranking), and one of the top ten scientific and technological progress.

In 1995 Dawning 1000 large-scale computer, with a peak performance of 250 million FLops, passed appraisal, received in 1996 and 1997 top awards by CAS and first-grade national scientific and technological award. In 1999 and 2000, different types of Dawning 2000 all passed the nation's appraisal. It was awarded by CAS as scientific and technological progress 2000 and second-grade of national scientific and technological award in 2001.

Dawning 3000 passed the appraisal in 2001.

On November 20, the neo-generation "Yinhe" high performance real-time simulation computer developed by University of Science and Technology for National Defense passed the technological appraisal in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province in south China.

In early 2003, grid-oriented Dawning 4000L at 3 TFLops was unveiled.

In 2003, 4.2-TFLop supercomputer was delivered to China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Legend 5-TFLops "DeepComp 6800" and 10-TFLops Dawning super computer was delivered to Shanghai Super Calculation Center. There will be more universities and enterprises engaged in developing super computers in 2004.

International game rule revised

China's achievement in supercomputer rewrote the game rule of international HPC and made foreign companies adjust their strategies. As disclosed by Dawning company, since the company appeared on the international arena for tender-bidding, it has forced foreign companies with "high price" to cut down the price by a large margin. "The profit the only move brought about for the users exceeded by far the total subsidies Dawning received for years. "

The supercomputers the United States permitted to export to China were generally the similar types with those homemade sold in domestic market. Therefore, the success of China's supercomputer has shattered the US curbing strategy on China. China's growth in supercomputer was also a process in which foreign countries were forced to loosen the limit on export.

After Dawning 2000, US started to allow companies such as Compaq, Sun to export HPCs loaded with 50 central processing units (CPUs) to China. On January 2, 2002, US government announced to relax again restrictions on export of high-speed computers. Sources said that some countries did this just because of China's homemade supercomputers. Before this, it was difficult for China to import supercomputers even inferior to homemade ones.

The pride of China

Only three computers from China, which were all imported, were among the world top 500 HPCs in 2000. However, up to November 2002, four of China's self-developed HPCs were listed into the top 500. The TC4000A was not a tabletop or laptop commonly used, but a computer group covering one fourth of a soccer field. TC4000A, with 2,560 AMDOperon800 serial processors, contains 640 points each of which has four processors. Sources said TC4000A ran at 10 TFlops in the benchmark test.

All the achievements are all the pride of the Chinese nation.

By People's Daily Online