Supercomputer Holds High Hopes After Trial Year

Supercomputer Holds High Hopes After Trial Year

A supercomputer capable of performing 384 billion floating-point calculations per second was put into operation Tuesday at the Beijing High-Speed Computer Application Center.

China is the third country, following the United States and Japan, capable of manufacturing such a supercomputer, said Zeng Peiyan, minister of the State Development Planning Commission at the opening ceremony.

Zeng made it clear that this supercomputer called "Shenwei-I'' in Chinese ("invincible might'') ranks 48 among the world's existing top supercomputers under business operation.

The establishment of the Beijing center has dramatically enhanced China's capability of processing massive scientific and technological data.

Remarkable achievements have already been made during the one-year trial operation of the computer in weather forecasting, human gene cloning, image formation of earthquakes and oil exploration.

While helping to develop practical, large-scale application software, "the supercomputer is playing an increasing role in pushing forwards the national economy as 60 per cent of its major systems are widely used by Chinese scientists today,'' Zeng said.

According to centre officials, the supercomputer has already opened up to many other Chinese users.

Systems of the Shenwei-I include mainframes, leading ends, disk arrays and software with a high memory main storage and disk array, distributed and concurrent operation systems compatible to industrial standards, calculating software databases and many other advanced designs, experts say.

Shenwei-I is a major achievement in Chinese research, manufacturing and application of supercomputers as major technological targets, say experts. Shenwei-I functions have reached the world's most advanced levels.

By November, another high-speed supercomputer center is scheduled to begin operation in Shanghai, the largest commercial city of China, Zeng said.