Middle Kingdom ready to bust some flops
THE DAWNING 5000A supercomputer will be up and running in the latter half of next year, the director of the
National Research Centre for Intelligent Computer Systems at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sun Ninghui, announced at a Shenzhen technology meeting Friday.
The 5000A is being independently developed by China and will use the Chinese developed
Longxin III CPU. The 5000A is expected to be more than 10 times faster than the Dawning 4000A, developed in cooperation with AMD. The 4000A reached speeds of 10 teraflops.
Although countries with leading supercomputer power, such as the US, have sought to restrict the export of speedy
hardware, The Chinese have been able to make some notable Great Leaps on their own. Spokesman, Mr. Sun revealed that a more advanced and speedier version of the supercomputer, the 5000L, would be released sometime in 2010.
China has 19 supercomputers on the top 500 list and accounts for 3.8 percent of the world's supercomputing power. The US, Germany, and the UK lead China in grand floppers.
The INQuirer