HPC R&D and applications in
China’s High-tech Programme
Depei Qian
Beihang University
June. 11, 2007, Edinburgh
863 effort on HPC







Early 1990’s: from intelligent computers to
parallel computers
Intelligent Computer R&D Center established
1993: Dawning 1, 640MIPS, SMP
1995: Dawning 1000, 2.5GFlops, MPP
1996: Dawning 1000A, cluster system
1998: Dawning 2000, 100GFlops, cluster
2000: Dawning 3000, 400GFlops, cluster,
comercialized
863 effort on HPC




2002: Lenovo DeepComp 1800, 1TFlops,
cluster
2003: Lenovo DeepComp 6800,
5.324TFlops, cluster, 14th in TOP500
2004: Dawning 4000A, 11.2TFlops, 10th
in TOP500
2004: Inspur high end enterprise servers
T20000, up to 4TFlops
Other efforts on HPC
Blade cluster (Galactic
Computing)
 Clusters in universities

Tsinghua University
 Shanghai University

Shift of emphasis



From pursuing peak performance to
pursuing scalability, usability,
maintainability, and availability (SUMA)
Commercialization
Compatibility to main steam systems,
supporting commercial software
Growing applications

Applications from traditional areas (weather
forecast, petro exploration) to much wider
range of applications








Bioinformatics
Drug discovery
Computational chemistry
Materials
Environment
Manufacturing
Simulation
……
Fast increase in HPC
installations
2002: 0.6 TFlops in TOP500
 End of 2006: 94 TFlops in
TOP500
 Terascale systems in major
universities, institutes, and
enterprises

Education/Training



Training programme introduced in
universities
Practical training in application
organizations
Textbooks (translations) on parallel
computing, algorithms and applications
HPC Environment


1999-2000: National High Performance
Computing Environment (NHPCE)
2002-present: CNGrid




10 sites
18 TFlops
>200TB storage
2003-present: ChinaGrid (20 universities)
CNGrid nodes locations
Beijing
Xi’an
Shanghai
Hefei
Changsha
Hong Kong
Complementary
R&D in HPC & Grid


HPCs provide major resources to
Grid
Grid enables easy access to HPC
resources and makes HPC available
to a much wide user population
Complementary
R&D in HPC & Grid



Since 1998, 863 programme begin effort in
HPC environment, resulting NHPCE, Grid
term was first introduced
2002-2005: 863 key project on HPC and core
software, focused on Grid, resulting in CNGird
2006-present: 863 key project on HPC and
Grid service environment, significant
upgrading of CNGrid resources, software, and
applications
CAS Supercomputing
Center (SCCAS)



Equipped with Lenovo
DeepComp 6800,
5.324TFlops
Average utilization 86%
Applications



>180 registered users
Supporting more than
120 important projects
Important achievements
SCCAS: User disciplines
45
40
Phy
Che
35
Astr
30
Mecha
Mater
Electro
25
Che/Phy
Geo
20
Comp
15
Space
10
Math
Bio
5
Eco
0
Acoustic
Phy
Astr
Mater
Che/Phy
Comp
Math
Eco
SCCAS: User distribution
SCCAS: Projects supported
80
863
自然科学基金
NSF
70
973
CAS innovation
60
Hundrad talents
50
Shanghai
其它项目
40
self-sel
973项目
30
20
10
0
CAS key
MOE
Liaoning
院创新
863项目
百人计划
自研项目
院国际合作
上海科委
教育部项目
中港合作
院方向
辽宁自然基金
CAS
international
Hong Kong
other
SCCAS: simulation software
OpenCFD
SCCAS: bioinformation
analysis toolkit
SCCAS: Geo Science
software GrADS
GrADS，
providing
interactive
operation to the
geographical
data. Applied in
meteorological
applications.
SCCAS: CNGrid
Operation Center
Shanghai Supercomputing
Center (SSC)

Equipped with Dawning 4000A, 10.2
TFlops, disk 95TB,

Utilization 82.58%
SSC: Shared software
Software name
source
purpose
1
LS-DYNA
com
General purpose dynamics analysis
2
Fluent
com
CFD
3
MSC.Nastran
com
structural mechanics abalysis
4
MSC.Marc
com
advanced finite element
5
Feko
com
electromagnetics analysis
6
Pam-Crash
com
Crash and safety simulation
7
ANSYS Multi-physics
com
Finite element dynamics analysis
8
CFX
com
Flow dynamics
9
Grapes
Self
Global/regional weather forecast
10
NWChem
OS
Parallel computational chemistry
11
Siesta
OS
Molecule dynamics
12
Ego
OS
Molecule dynamics
13
CPMD
OS
14
Abinit
OS
15
Gromacs
OS
SSC: Users

About 250 users

Major portion: Shanghai local

But also from other parts of the country

Users from university, institutes and
enterprises, 1/3 each
SSC: user distribution
Other 57
各类机构机时用量比例图
East China 35
中科院所
Shanghai 159
高校
工程院所
基础研究所
（除中科院）
企业公司
中科院所
各类机构用户帐号个数比例图
高校
工程院所
基础研究所
（除中科院）
企业公司
内部
内部
SCC: projects supported

More than 200

863、973、NSF、Shanghai STC projects,
etc.

ARJ21 aircraft, outer ring tunnel aseismatic
assessment, automobile industry
SSC: Cross-Yangtze tunnel
construction simulation

Tunnel length: 8.9 km，Diameter: 15.2m
SSC: Cross-Yangtze tunnel
construction simulation
T=20s
T=40s
SSC: Car safety analysis
LS-DYNA: simulates car crash at 56km/h for 100ms
process, on Dawning 4000A, 32CPU, 3 hours
The new 863 key project



Period: 2006-2010, launched in Oct. 2006
640 million (RMB) from the MOST and at
least equal amount of matching funding from
different organizations
Major efforts:
 High productivity Computer development
 CNGrid development
 CNGrid GOS continuous development
 12-15 Grid applications
Goal of the new 863 Key
Project on HPC



Developing petascale high
productivity computer
Innovation in HPC technologies,
reaching the world level
Advance in HPC design,
manufacturing and applications
Major Challenges

Novel architectures
Memory/cache
 Parallel I/O
 Interconnect




High performance computing node
Low power consumption
Reliability and robustness
Major Challenges


Programming supporting
Runtime support




Algorithms for petascale systems
System infrastructure




Scheduling of massive threads
Multi-core related issues
Installation/configuration
Cooling
Fast deployment
Application support
Two phase development
of HPCs


Two 100TFlops machines in the first phase
(By the end of 2008)
One 1000Tflops in the second phase (TBD)




User?
Investment
Installation in CNGrid Major sites
Promoting HPC and grid applications
Cooperation with UK/EU

Cooperation with UK and EU HPC
projects
Researchers exchange
 Application experiences exchange
 Conferences/workshops
 Education/training
 Joint R&D projects?

Thank you!