The Race to Build the World’s Fastest Supercomputers | WSJ U.S. vs. China

The U.S. supercomputer Frontier was crowned the world’s speediest this year, but some computer scientists say China‘s Tianhe-3 may be as fast. WSJ unpacks the tech and design of the machines as the two countries race to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Photo illustration: Sharon Shi

U.S. vs. China
This original video series explores the rivalry between the two superpowers’ competing efforts to develop the technologies that are reshaping our world.

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#Supercomputers #China #WSJ

[adonisvan]

Let these two compete in tech race that can benefit the human race, not an army race that can destroy humanity

[capitalwinnie]

the first computer was the size of a house imagine what this would look like in 20 years lol

[CengalLut]

Americans blocked Chinese access to the best chips, then act surprised when Chinese researchers stop collaborating with them on computing research.

[MYLITTLEPWNY]

"the compute node is basically like your personal computer"
Pulls out my PC with 8 GPUS and 2 CPUS

[tonysu]

Although it might be interesting how the Tianhe 3 might perform,
I'm at least as interested in the SUNWAY TAIHULIGHT which although was #1 when it was first submitted in 2016, is still ranked #6 in the June 2022 Top 500 report that was recently published.
Unlike the Tianhe 2A which is still ranked #9 on the same list, the SUNWAY seems to be built entirely with domestic and proprietary chips, accelerators and interconnects. This machine might be a better indication of China's computing capability because it might be using 100% domestic technology while the Tianh3 2A is built using Intel Xeon chips, Chinese accelerators and interconnects.

[eggman]

The chips in those computers are not at all "tiny." The Radeon Instinct MI250X GPUs in Frontier have a die size of 1540 mm^2.

[havencat]

And...how do you expect them to reveal what they do if they are blocked continuously whenever they make any small progress?

[devondevon]

One of the US advantages is that it has a lot of talent born abroad, such as 4:09 Thomas Zacharia, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He was born in India and has obtained a Ph.D. in Computational Material Science.
PS
According to a 2017 study, 81% of students enrolled in Electrical Engineering in US grad schools were international students. At Yale University, 88% in Electrical Engineering were international students, while 81% in computer science were.
At Dartmouth, 89% of students enrolled in its graduate computer science program were international students. At NYU- Tandon School of Engineering, 92% of the graduate computer science students were international students.
PS This doesn't include permanent residents or naturalized citizens; hence the percentage would be higher for those born abroad.

[TheMrFishnDucks]

Very informative video. Keep up the good work.

[masterzen]

Scary thing is the first fully operational quantum computer will blow this out of the water. which if used to crack our strongest encryption algorithms today, would be easy work for it.

[stjojokaras]

I think Japan is also competing in this race.

[luxuryhub]

I have no idea, what this is about, but it seems gigantic. The effort China puts into new technologies,
and the advancement they are achieving on a steady pace is amazing. Thank you for showing it to the world.

[Supercarsguy]

Both Countries Are Doing Great... Keep it Up ❤

[Anna__Zheng]

how do these computers compare to quantum computers in speed and technology?

[zAlaska]

The new cerebras wafer processor is capable of 80 EXO scale speeds. They described this supercomputer as 1 EXO scale. The wafer processor is about 40, 000 Watts and this machine is over a million Watts, I believe I put these numbers in correct perspective. This monster supercomputer is already dated. Expect the next generation of machines this size to be terrifyingly fast compared to this slow machine. When I bought my first 486 dx2 computer with a 33 MHz bus operating at 66 MHz in the late '80s I couldn't imagine machines operating at a faster speed. Now I can't imagine such high frequencies, it boggles the mind.

[jolness]

One thing to keep in mind is that China will test massive sets of nodes that are not designed to actually be super computers but rather process other sorts of traffic as many smaller scale systems and have them put on the top 500 List. Not that they haven’t made great strides by any means but I do think that is an important qualifier as far as the number of systems

[RebornGalaxy]

very powerful, I heard they can run Cyberpunk 2077 in 30 FPS even..

[phlprinting]

china already has the fastest computer

[sohailvlogt]

WSJ make video on Quantum computing china vs US.
China world leader in Quantum computing.

[andydondy]

50 years from now.. Ppl are gonna laugh at the size of those computers.. 😁😁😁