Supercomputing; Compare China With US

choi

Bob davis, China's Not-So-Super Computers. Wall Street Journal, Mar 24, 2012.
http;//online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303812904577298062429510918.html

Quote:

(a) "Supercomputers are largely seen in China as local economic development tools. * * * US supercomputer centers nearly always focus on advanced scientific research, such as designing drugs tailored to individuals.

(b) "Changes in the way the machines are designed have helped the country.

"In the 1980s, when Cray Research in Minneapolis was the world's supercomputer technology leader, the machines were powered by a few enormously powerful processors, whose design was difficult to match. Starting in the 1990s, supercomputer researchers began to lash together tens of thousands off-the-shelf microprocessors to work on a single job. China could buy those computer chips from Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other firms and make its own machines.

(c) "One of China's weakness is in software development, a potentially crippling problem because the usefulness of the machines depends on the quality of the software applications. Less than 10% of supercomputing funding goes to developing such applications, said Chinese researchers who complain that political leaders press them to build headline-grabbing new machines rather than focus on whether they are used to their full advantages.

"In the US, which spends about six times as much on supercomputers as China, the software budget equals about 30% of hardware spending, and computer specialists say even that level isn't sufficient.