Chinese supercomputers: how to lead the world in the era of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a hot spot and trend in the development of science and technology in today's world, and it is also a key factor in future international competition. As an important support platform for artificial intelligence, supercomputers provide powerful data processing, algorithm operation and model training capabilities for artificial intelligence. In the past ten years, China's supercomputer has made remarkable achievements, not only in terms of performance, but also in the application of strong strength. So, what is the current state of China's supercomputers? What is the ranking and level internationally? What are the challenges and advantages? Can it be ahead of the AI competition?

The current state of supercomputers in China

According to the latest list released by the international authoritative organization TOP500, as of November 2021, China has 173 supercomputers on the list, accounting for 34.6% of the total number of supercomputers on the list, making it the country with the largest number of supercomputers on the list. Among them, China occupies 4 seats in the top 10 supercomputers.

It can be seen that the performance of China's supercomputers is increasing year by year. In 2002, the average performance of supercomputers was only 0.09 Tflops, and in 2013 it quickly grew to 573.1 Tflops. In November 2020, the Linpack⁴ performance of the world's top 500 supercomputers exceeded 1319 TFlops; The Linpack performance of China's TOP100 machines all exceeds that of 1869 Tflops.

The ranking and level of Chinese supercomputers in the world

Since 2010, China has had the world's fastest supercomputer for many years in a row. In 2010, Tianhe-1 topped the world's supercomputing list for the first time, breaking the long-standing monopoly of the United States. In 2013, Tianhe-2 won the world supercomputing championship again with a performance of 33.86 Pflops per second and maintained its leading position for 6 years. In 2016, Sunway Taihu Light set a new world record with a performance of 93 Pflops per second and became the first supercomputer built entirely with a domestic processor. Up to now, Sunway Taihulight has won the global supercomputer competition for four consecutive times.

In addition to computing speed, Chinese supercomputers have also shown great strength in other aspects. In November 2016, the high-performance computing application project based on Sunway Taihulight won the "Gordon Bell" award, the highest international high-performance computing application field, which became a milestone achievement in the development of high-performance computing applications in mainland China. In November 2017, at the Global Supercomputing Conference held in Denver, USA, the "nonlinear seismic simulation" completed by the Chinese scientific research team won the "Gordon Bell" award⁷. Harnessing the powerful computing power of Sunway Taihulight, the team successfully designed and implemented a highly scalable nonlinear seismic simulation tool. For the first time, this tool realizes high-resolution and accurate simulation of the occurrence process of the Tangshan earthquake, which enables scientists to better understand the impact of the Tangshan earthquake and has important reference significance for future earthquake prevention and prediction.

Challenges and advantages of Chinese supercomputers

Although China's supercomputers have made remarkable achievements, they also face many challenges and difficulties. On the one hand, with the increase of the scale and complexity of supercomputers, how to improve the reliability, availability, maintainability and scalability of the system is an urgent problem to be solved. On the other hand, with the strong sanctions imposed by the United States on key technologies such as Chinese chips, how to ensure the security of supercomputers is a major test. In addition, how to improve the application level and innovation ability of supercomputers so that they can better serve the major needs of the country and the development of high-tech industries is also a long-term task.

At the same time, Chinese supercomputers also have many advantages and potential. On the one hand, China has a huge market demand and user group, which provides a broad application space and development momentum for supercomputers. On the other hand, China has a complete industrial chain and innovation system, which provides solid technical support and talent guarantee for supercomputers. In addition, China has an open and inclusive cooperation concept and an equal and mutually beneficial cooperation mode, which provides a good international environment and partners for supercomputers.

The problem of China's supercomputer being ahead of the AI competition.

The combination of supercomputers and artificial intelligence can generate powerful synergies to promote innovation and development in scientific computing, industrial simulation, biomedicine, smart cities and other fields.

China's supercomputers have shown good performance in the competition of artificial intelligence. According to some reports, Chinese supercomputers have achieved outstanding results in the following areas:

Using Sunway Taihu Light, a large number of parallel software based on deep learning algorithms have been developed, and a deep learning platform swCaffe has been developed. At present, deep learning applications based on supercomputers have been carried out, including Go, speech recognition, medical image recognition, remote sensing image classification, seismic wave aftershock feature recognition, and high-precision reconstruction of large-scale cryo-EM biological macromolecule models.

Tianhe-2A was used to carry out large-scale neural network simulation and brain science research, realize the simulation of 100 million neurons and 100 billion synaptic connections, and explore brain functional networks and brain disease mechanisms.

The Dawning 6000 was used to carry out the design and verification of artificial intelligence chips based on supercomputers, realize the efficient simulation and optimization of tens of billions of transistor integrated circuits, and provide technical support for domestic chips.

The Tianhe-3 prototype was used to carry out supercomputer-based natural language processing research, realize semantic understanding and knowledge extraction of the full text of Chinese Wikipedia (about 1 billion words), and construct a large-scale Chinese knowledge graph.

Can China's supercomputers lead the AI competition?

Although China's supercomputers have achieved certain advantages in the artificial intelligence competition, there are still some challenges and problems to face in order to achieve a real lead. According to the analysis of some experts and scholars, these challenges and problems mainly include:

The collaborative optimization between supercomputers and artificial intelligence is not sufficient, and it is necessary to further improve the adaptability and support of supercomputers to artificial intelligence applications, such as providing more efficient parallel programming models, more flexible data management strategies, and more powerful communication networks.

The innovation collaboration between supercomputers and artificial intelligence is not deep enough, and it is necessary to further strengthen the cross-integration and joint exploration of supercomputers and artificial intelligence, such as using the powerful computing power of supercomputers to promote the research of basic theories and cutting-edge methods of artificial intelligence, and using artificial intelligence technology to improve the performance and efficiency of supercomputers.

The application synergy between supercomputers and artificial intelligence is not extensive enough, and it is necessary to further expand the application fields and scenarios of supercomputers and artificial intelligence, such as applying supercomputers and artificial intelligence to major national needs and strategic fields, such as national defense, aerospace, energy, environment, medical care, education, etc., and applying supercomputers and artificial intelligence to high-tech industries and social and economic development, such as cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, smart cities, etc.

China's supercomputers already have a certain foundation and advantages in the artificial intelligence competition, but in order to achieve real leadership, more efforts and breakthroughs need to be made in collaborative optimization, innovation collaboration and application collaboration. Only in this way can China's supercomputers play a greater role and value in the era of artificial intelligence.

China's supercomputer is an important symbol and advantage of the mainland's scientific and technological development and international competition. In the era of artificial intelligence, there is a close connection and interaction between Chinese supercomputers and artificial intelligence. China's supercomputers have made remarkable achievements in the competition of artificial intelligence, but they also face many challenges. How to overcome difficulties, seize opportunities, strengthen collaborative innovation, improve application level, and achieve leading position is the direction we need to think about and work towards. We believe that in the era of artificial intelligence, China's supercomputers will certainly be able to exert greater potential and value, and make greater contributions to the mainland's scientific and technological progress, social development and people's happiness.