By Zhao Guangli, Reporter at China Science News
In 2023, global technology development has taken a leap forward - the emergence of 2D transistor, ChatGPT iteration, drilling to a depth of 10,000 meters, mapping of human brain cells... As the behind-the-scenes hero of scientific discoveries and engineering achievements, high-performance computing, or "supercomputing", has developed over the past year. Apart from computing speed, what else should we pay attention to in the future?Recently, Qian Depai, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor at Beihang University, gave an exclusive interview to China Science News, providing us with a retrospective, analysis, judgment, and outlook. In his view, supercomputing should not be a "heavy equipment" that only a few can afford and use, but rather the more people participate and use it, the better.Qian Depai, Image provided by IntervieweeRetrospective
The Development of China's Supercomputing Enters a New Stage
China Science News:Could you briefly introduce the recent developments of supercomputing in China?Qian Depai:In the past year or two, although it has been relatively difficult, China's supercomputing has made new progress in terms of construction scale and application level. The development of the industry has entered a new stage.China's supercomputing has been on the "fast track" since 2000 and has achieved remarkable results in the past 20 years. It can be said that without the rapid development of the domestic economy in recent years and the support of various levels of government, China's supercomputing would not be where it is today.However, compared with the United States, there is still a considerable gap in the scale and application level of China's supercomputing. It should be noted that the United States' investment in supercomputing far exceeds ours. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project (ECP), which started in 2018, has invested $1.8 billion in the development of exascale supercomputers alone, and the investment in exascale computing application and operation and maintenance is also close to this amount. In comparison, the achievements made by China's supercomputing with limited investment are still satisfactory.China Science News:What were the impressive events in the field of supercomputing in the just past 2023?Qian Depai:By 2023, two of the three exascale supercomputers (E-level supercomputers) planned by the United States have been launched - Frontier deployed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the recently deployed half-scale Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory. After the completion of the entire Aurora system, its computing performance will exceed 2 exaflops, and it is expected to be launched in 2024, surpassing Frontier on the global TOP500 supercomputer rankings and becoming the new world's number one supercomputer.A significant event in the field of domestic supercomputing in 2023 is the launch and deployment of the National Supercomputing Internet.One of the main goals of the National Supercomputing Internet is to explore a new operation and service system by closely connecting supply and demand. It allows for the overall allocation of computing resources and promotes interconnectivity and sharing at the application level. I believe that the key to this initiative is to ensure that both the supply and demand sides can benefit, and based on this premise, China's computing technology can further develop to a higher level and promote the in-depth application of independent core software and hardware technologies.China Science News:Self-reliance, supercomputing connectivity, universal application, intelligent integration, low-carbon green... Among these terms, which ones represent the development characteristics of China's supercomputing in the past year?Qian Depai:"Self-reliance" has been the practice of China's supercomputing for many years, and "low-carbon green" has also been the common goal for many years, so these two terms are not specific to 2023.The terms that can represent the characteristics of 2023, I believe "supercomputing connectivity" and "intelligent integration" are more widely recognized. As for "universal application", I think our supercomputing has not reached that stage in 2023, but it is a goal that we should strive for.Analysis
Integration and Collaborative Optimization Becomes the Key
China Science News:In 2023, as the year of "large-scale model" and "AIGC", supercomputing is also accelerating its integration with artificial intelligence (AI), driving scientific research and industrial applications into the era of digital intelligence. In terms of the fusion of supercomputing and intelligent computing, what points do you think should be paid attention to?Qian Depai:Both supercomputing and intelligent computing are fundamentally about computation. The "super" in supercomputing is a phased concept, a description of higher computing power. Intelligent computing is the computational infrastructure that supports intelligent applications, and people have given them names based on their respective characteristics - supercomputing for traditional numerical calculations and intelligent computing for the use of deep learning models and open data. The discussion of fusion is also based on the unification of the two types of computational capabilities and applications.Based on this understanding, the integration of supercomputing and intelligent computing is an objective existence. I believe there are two aspects that should be emphasized.
