Does Your Petaflop?

A petaflop is computer-speak for one thousand trillion mathematical computations per second. We’ve come a long way in the world of computers and computing power. Just think that the US Census Bureau took possession of a 29,000 pound, 125-kilowatt-sucking, water-cooled, vacuum-tube (5,200 of them) driven UNIVAC in 1951. It could process up to 11 digit numbers at the then astounding rate of 10,000 calculations per second. You’d throw away your laptop today if that’s all it did.

Every year, at the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) in Hamburg, Germany, they announce the world’s 500 fastest computers; governments and really wealthy research centers tend to own and develop what we call “supercomputers,” whose processing speeds replicate the aggregate capacity of thousands and thousands of desktops and often approach or exceed that “petaflop” barrier (at least since 2008). When you start playing with trying to figure out global climate patterns, traffic flow on freeway systems, military laser-guiding tracking systems or even advanced automotive design, traditional main frame computers are irrelevant slugs.

This year ISC announced that, once again, the Oak Ridge Laboratory (Tennessee) “Cray Jaguar” won the race with 1.75 petaflops. Wow! One thousand seven hundred and seventy five thousand trillion mathematical calculations per second! Pretty fast! And thank God, it’s here in the good old US of A. We’re number one; we’re number one! Good feeling, huh?

Until you look over your shoulder and see who’s number two. No, it’s not North Korea or Iran. Whew! It’s China with a super-impressive 1.27 petaflop capacity; the computer named (“Dawning Nebulae”) is across the border from Hong Kong, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen… and as to “theoretical peak performance” (a less valuable measurement), it actually ranks first on earth. China moved up from fifth place last year (with a system based in Tianjin, China) to second this year. The consolation? The basic component array of this Chinese first runner-up is based on Intel and Nvidia chips, but expect China to step into this part of the manufacturing process very soon. We’ve been on top of the rankings for decades – except for a brief moment in 200 2 when Japan showed off its “Earth Simulator” – but that dominance is about to end.

The United States still has 282 of the top 500 supercomputers, but China is poised to exceed the aggregate supercomputing power of all of the units in the European Union within the next year or two. And they are working on a Chinese design that could easily give them first place in next year’s rankings. In a world of global competition and competing military technology, these developments are… well… super-important. As our educational system is beginning to plunge, one would hope that some of this brain power could at least be “covered” with artificial brains. No such luck. Just as the Chinese complain that they are too much the “implementers of other nations’ designs,” they are developing the capacity to out-design the rest of the world in solving the most complex problems on the planet. And trust me, their educational system is not taking a plunge! “We’re number two; we’re number two! And sliding!” doesn’t sound so good, does it? We’re on the way…

I’m Peter Dekom, and the King of the Hill is always the target of change.