China's new supercomputer could give Intel a run for its money

China’s global dominance is a matter of fact now. Let’s leave the economy aside. What’s perhaps missing is China’s domination in the world of technology. And it seems China is now keen on overcoming these technological shortcomings.

China released a new supercomputer last week, called the Sunway BlueLight MPP supercomputer, at a conference in Jinan. What’s the big deal about this computer? The microprocessor chips are not manufactured by Intel or AMD; they’re Chinese made, clearly revealing that China intends to achieve techonological domination with independence.

The supercomputer is talk of the geek world because if the Chinese microprocessor chips are successful, the centre of computing could shift east. The supercomputer has also been reviewed by the New York Times , which states,

“The Sunway system, which can perform about 1,000 trillion calculations per second - a petaflop - will probably rank among the 20 fastest computers in the world. More significantly, it is composed of 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 microprocessors, designed at a Chinese computer institute and manufactured in Shanghai.”

But the big shocker in this new system is that while the machine is nearly as fast as the Intel processors, it uses only one megawatt energy which could give the new machine and the Chinese a significant edge. There is no doubt that as far as supercomputers go, China is fast improving and the indigenous chips are going to give it the edge.

Cade Metz, in Wired writes,

“According to reports from Jinan, the ShenWei microprocessor was designed at a supercomputinginstitute in China and manufactured in Shanghai, and it uses a new instruction set - not the venerable x86 instruction set used by Intel and AMD. The chip runs at about 1GHz, which is well under the speed of the latest Intel and AMD chips, but a lower clock also means it consumes less power.”

Basically the new machine uses less power, and works at the same speed as those supercomputers using Intel or AMD chips.

Clearly the new Chinese machine must be a bit of an unpleasant surprise for Intel and AMD. The supercomputing field is more about prestige and bragging rights but the Chinese efforts at using homemade chips are likely to cause some serious ego issues. Japan’s K remains the world’s fastest supercomputer, but the latest Chinese addition to the list could change the game in a significant way.

Another possibility is that if the Chinese microprocessors are a success, then it could break the Intel and AMD monopoly; China could produce more chips that can be used for daily computing and not just supercomputers.