Tianhe-2
| Sponsors | 863 Program |
|---|---|
| Location | Guangzhou, China |
| Architecture | Intel Xeon E5, Xeon Phi |
| Power | 17.6 MW (24 MW with cooling) |
| Operating system | Kylin Linux[1] |
| Memory | 1,375 TiB (1,000 TiB CPU and 375 TiB Coprocessor)[1] |
| Storage | 12.4 PB |
| Speed | 33.86 PFLOPS |
| Cost | 2.4 billion Yuan (390 million USD)[2] |
| Purpose | Research and education |
Tianhe-2 or TH-2 (Chinese: 天河-2; pinyin: tiānhé-èr; lit. 'Skyriver-2' idiomatically "Milky Way 2") is a 33.86 petaflops supercomputer located in Guangzhou, China.[3].It is developed by the team of 1300 scientists and engineers.
It was the world's fastest supercomputer according to the TOP500 list for June and November 2013.[4][5]
History
The development of Tianhe-2 was sponsored by the 863 High Technology Program, initiated by the Chinese Government, the government of Guangdong province, and the government of Guangzhou city.[1] It was built by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in collaboration with the Chinese IT firm Inspur.[1][5] Inspur manufactured the printed circuit boards and helped with the installation and testing of the system software.[1] The project was originally scheduled for completion in 2015, but was instead declared operational in June 2013.[6] As of June 2013, The Supercomputer has yet to become fully operational. It is expected to reach its full computing capabilities by the end of 2013.[5]
In June 2013, Tianhe-2 topped the TOP500 list of fastest supercomputers in the world. The computer beat out second place finisher Titan by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. Titan, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, achieved 17.59 petaflops, while Tianhe-2 achieved 33.86 petaflops. Tianhe-2's phenomenal performance returned the title of the world's fastest supercomputer to China after Tianhe-I's debut in November 2010. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers said Tianhe-2's win "symbolizes China's unflinching commitment to the supercomputing arms race".[5] China houses 66 of the top 500 supercomputers, second only to the United States' 252 systems.[3]
Also in June 2013, Tianhe-2 is ranked sixth on the Graph500 list of top supercomputers. In their benchmark, the system tested at 2061 giga-TEPS (traversed edges per second). The top system, IBM Sequoia, tested at 15363 giga-TEPS.[4]
Tianhe-2 will be housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou (NSCC-GZ) after the completion of the testing procedures.[1]
Applications
According to NUDT, Tianhe-2 will be used for simulation, analysis, and government security applications.[1]
With 16,000 computer nodes, each comprising two Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon processors and three Xeon Phi chips for a total of 3,120,000 cores.[3] This represents the world's biggest installation of Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi chips. Each of the 16,000 nodes possess 88 gigabytes of memory (64 used by the Ivy Bridge processors, and 8 gigabytes for each of the Xeon Phi processors). The total CPU plus coprocessor memory is 1,375 TiB (approximately 1.34 PiB).[1]
During the testing phase, Tianhe-2 was laid out in a non-optimal confined space. When assembled at its final location, the system will have a theoretical peak performance of 54.9 petaflops. At peak power consumption, the system itself would draw 17.6 megawatts of power. Including external cooling, the system would draw an aggregate of 24 megawatts. The computer complex would occupy 720 square meters of space.[1]
The front-end system consists of 4096 Galaxy FT-1500 CPUs, a SPARC derivative designed and built by NUDT. Each FT-1500 has 16 cores and a 1.8 gigahertz cycle time. The chip has a performance of 144 gigaflops and runs on 65 watts. The interconnect, called the TH Express-2, designed by NUDT, utilizes a fat tree topology with 13 switches each of 576 ports.[1]
Tianhe-2 runs on Kylin Linux, a version of the operating system developed by NUDT. Resource management is based on Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM).[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Dongarra, Jack (June 3, 2013). "Visit to the National University for Defense Technology Changsha, China" (PDF). Netlib. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
- ^ Chen, Stephen (20 June 2013). "World's fastest supercomputer may get little use".
- ^ a b c "June 2013". TOP500. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
- ^ a b "The Graph 500 List: June 2013". Graph 500. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
- ^ a b c d Davey Alba (June 17, 2013). "China's Tianhe-2 Caps Top 10 Supercomputers". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
- ^ Michael Kan, IDG News Service (2012-10-31). "China is building a 100-petaflop supercomputer". infoworld.com. Retrieved 2012-10-31.