
U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China - sew
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-invests-258-million-in-supercomputing-race-with-china-1497549600
======
killjoywashere
USG has tons of compute. What we don't have is the tooling behind AWS or GCP
(minus GovCloud which is mainly inaccessible due to infosec and budgetary
insanity).

Our scientists look at what could be, look at their very interesting datasets,
and then gnash their teeth for want of better tooling. People know this.
Senior people from industry have screamed at senior government leadership that
they are 20 years behind and falling faster. Nothing changes. Why?

Every time someone gets out from under their grad school payoff contract, they
run to Google or Facebook.

Very few people are committing for the long term, and that's what's needed.
Long-term commitment to steward a program. The people who remain often lack
technical chops, have "certificates" in "cyber" something or other, but got
through the Acquisitions school and now have authority to just pour money into
blades, load Red Hat and mpi4py, and say "look, it's a supercomputer"!

They don't need to invest in iron. They need to invest in people. But they
think they can just keep hiring new grads and expect magic.

~~~
Retric
AWS is a terrible match for super computing hardware. Sure, there are some
embarrassingly parallel workloads that don't need fast interconnects, but
mostly latency or memory becomes the issue.

~~~
batbomb
Dirty little secret:

Much the computing on these machines isn't supercomputing and doesn't need
fast interconnects. In fact, many (most?) workloads would be best done in the
cloud. Except we already bought these machines. So there's tons of frameworks
around meant to use these machines like they are AWS pizza boxes. If it's
inefficient due to an architectural mismatch, that's fine. You're still using
the machine that was paid for, and the only numbers that matter is
utilization, and those metrics aren't even defined in terms of CPU
utilization. If you reserve 10 nodes, and only run on one node, it's still
reported that a 10 node job ran for 6 hours, not that a 10 node job job ran at
10% efficiency for 6 hours.

As far as why the accounting is this way, it's assumed that users will attempt
to maximize their usage since allocations are defined. But even then, you can
blow through your allocation and generally ask for more. But that's not
necessarily what happens.

In summary: Because we bought these big computers, we have to use them, even
if the workload isn't a good match.

~~~
Retric
Amdahl's law, if you spend more on interconnects you only speed up a subset of
your workloads. But the reverse is also true so buying more nodes and less
interconnects only speeds up a subset of your workloads. The optimum is going
to seem wasteful on average.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law)

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crb002
That's like 1/5 the cost of one F35 Flying Turkey?

~~~
losteric
And a mere 2% the cost of the USS Gerald Ford (which would probably be
destroyed within 24 hours of active war with China)

~~~
vonmoltke
I would like to see the details if your tactical analysis on that.

~~~
themgt
I'd recommend these as an interesting starting point ([2] has videos):

[1] [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-military-balance-
of-...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-military-balance-of-power-in-
western.html)

[2] [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/09/balance-of-power-in-
wes...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/09/balance-of-power-in-western-
pacific.html)

~~~
vonmoltke
I read through those, including some of the referenced articles. My opinion is
that the DF-21 is overhyped, as is the vulnerability of CVBGs to satellite
detection. I'm on my phone right now, so I'll circle back to details later.

------
vmarsy
top500.org, which maintains the list of the 500 fatest supercomputers in the
world also has more details on this [1]

> The PathForward program [...] address the four key challenges: parallelism,
> memory and storage, reliability and energy consumption

Energy consumption is becoming a very important challenge, as the article
says, current petascale supercomputers consume "enough power to run a small
town". Major efforts will need to be made to have Exascale supercomputers that
don't consume the equivalent of 10^3 small towns.

[1] [https://www.top500.org/news/doe-shells-out-258-million-to-
si...](https://www.top500.org/news/doe-shells-out-258-million-to-six-vendors-
to-develop-exascale-hardware/)

------
davidf18
Competition is good. For research, The Cold War with Russia and the resulting
"Space Race" was good. In Israel, they spend a much larger share of their
national income on R&D, largely to develop technologies to defend themselves.

~~~
Thriptic
This. I'd argue one of the biggest problems facing the United States right now
is that there is a (falsely) perceived lack of competition / existential
threats which is making us lazy and complacent.

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dis-sys
This is just stupid. US basically sent out a signal to its competitor to
demand them to invest more heavily on their own R&D capabilities- what Chinese
universities, research institutions and companies are going to do with such
news? They take it to the Chinese central government to ask for more R&D
funding.

Think about it - what China can possibly lose in such a race? When Americans
are trying to maintain its No.1 ranking in the field, Chinese are just trying
to further modernize its industry which stands at less than $10k GDP per
capita, you can probably beat the next generation Chinese supercomputer, but
hey, you are pushing for the creation/improvement of the Chinese
supercomputing community!

Think about it again - what China can possibly lose in such a race? America
won't lose its overall dominance just because some other countries have faster
supercomputers, America is losing its influence around the global when it
stupidly using its borrowed resources to force its main competitor (also
No.1/2 debt owner) for more R&D spending.

~~~
nippples
Son, you're not making too much sense. Of all things to be mad about, tech
investments isn't one of them.

~~~
dis-sys
If supercomputer is a race and the race is between the US & China, then such
investment from the US federal government using borrowed money is _not_ doing
any favour to the US - it might build a few faster supercomputer in the end,
but in the long run, such a direct head on competition which fuels Chinese R&D
spending in arguably one of the most cutting edge fields is damaging US
interests.

Why Chinese are building supercomputers on their own? Because the US laws
prohibit any US supercomputer export to China, including the export of core
components that can be used to build such supercomputers.

In case you are not familiar with the matter - the above mentioned core
components are not some fancy parts guarded by your NSA - we are talking about
parts that can be freely purchased on ebay for $300-1000 each.

------
zt
This is chump change, we should have invested $2.58 billion or more. China
isn't taking half measures in their state's science and technology
investments. They realize we're in a second cold war, just one where the two
combatants have more economic interdependence. They are making investments
like the ones that helped us win the last war.

~~~
nullnilvoid
> They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start
> another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized
> world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any
> progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed
> as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China
> bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then the U.S. government
> banned Intel from selling high end chips to China[1]. China had to create
> homemade chips for world's fastest supercomputer[2].

[1] [http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-
chip...](http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/)
[2] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-
secre...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secretive-
super-fast-chip-powers-the-worlds-fastest-computer.html)

~~~
myrandomcomment
I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US
as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous
claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China.
They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the
1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in
everything they do.

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in
the 1800s?

~~~
ori_b
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars)

~~~
alexeldeib
Adding onto this, consider that China was, for a relatively long period in its
development, the dominant power in its interactions. Interactions with the
colonial West in the 1800s were a dramatic departure from long term history in
a number of ways. At the end of the 1800s, the Sino Japanese War was also a
major defeat for the Chinese. From a certain perspective, the current state of
affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal.

~~~
dis-sys
"the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term
return to normal"

CCP has its own "Make China Great Again" thing, officially known as "The great
rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

[https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-
NATI...](https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION-
NATION/dp/7119086960)

------
JosephLark
Some non-paywalled information at Anandtech: PathForward: US Dept. of Energy
Awards $258M in Research Contracts To Develop Exascale Supercomputer
Technology [0]

[0] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy-
awards...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy-
awards-258m-to-develop-exascale-supercomputer-technology)

------
steve371
only 200M? Am I the only one think it is a small budget for supercomputing?

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mbloom1915
DOE? that cant be right

~~~
evanb
Energy, not Education.

------
randcraw
Here's the same content at AnandTech (w/o paywall):

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy-
awards...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy-
awards-258m-to-develop-exascale-supercomputer-technology)

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albertTJames
Tweeting will be so fast, it is going to be great

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davidgrenier
It'll be a shame if they don't dump a chunk of that money on the Mill. However
there may very well be some string attached unsuitable to Ivan Godard et al.

~~~
deepnotderp
The Mill isn't really very well suited for supercomputing workloads. It tries
to do well on poorly written C++ code (aka "general purpose code") that OoO
machines have historically don well on. By contrast, VLIW machines are
perfectly suitable for supercomputing, and indeed, I think that Itanium did
well in the HPC world until it was discontinued.

Something like the Rex Computing Neo would be more suitable for this.

------
mbloom1915
Why is this in the DOE budget?

~~~
jarmitage
This is where the US' climate change budget is going [citation needed]

Guess this now needs reconfiguring
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange)

------
sitkack
Pennies.

------
zantana
Does betteridge's law apply to conference talks?
[http://sc14.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail-
evid=pa...](http://sc14.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail-
evid=pan105.html)

------
jayzalowitz
They shoulda invested 256 million, woulda been more efficient.

~~~
Yahivin
You mean $268,435,456?

~~~
YokoZar
256 mibillion

------
meric
I've spent a lot of time in country X. They all want Y.

Okay. That's the kind of crap that was in the 1800's, that's still in the
2010's, unfortunately.

Your words sound like something from a grown up bully jealous of their
victim's achievements in life.

~~~
myrandomcomment
How do you know I am not Chinese or my wife is not? Or my best friend? Or
someone in my family?

I wish the best for China and the Chinese people. I hope for a peaceful and
prosperous future. That however does not involve the threat to take Taiwan by
force or claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs.

What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I
have read in the press but based on the fact that I have spent time in the
country and have read the local press, and spoken with the local people. The
humiliation faced by the Chinese at the hand of the western powers is a common
theme of books and movies and TV shows in China.

~~~
meric
Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents,
and their grandparents.

I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the
1800's.

Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same
reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman
empire stuff. It's part of their history.

Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan has been developing peacefully for
almost 70 years since the civil war, I don't see any violence over there.

..."claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs"

Lots of governments do lots of crap, does that mean we can say the whole
country and all its people want it?

And what does U.S. has anything to do with any of this stuff, anyway. Sure I
understand if China was doing things in Mexico or the Caribbean, but I don't
understand why they want to meddle in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and South
China Sea, and then call Russia, Iran, China as agitators.

Do I think that's what the U.S. public support? Meddle in countries half way
around the world? No!

And thanks for your best wishes.

~~~
myrandomcomment
The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the
Convention of the Sea.

China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan.

China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent
Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China.

China arrest and brutalized dissidents.

The rule of law in China is what ever the current leader says it is - Where is
吳小暉 (Wu Xiaohui)?

China kidnapped booksellers from Hong Kong in violation of the treaty that
governs Hong Kong because of their political views.

I could make a list a mile long.

I stand by my statement that China's rise to power is scary because the
motivations of the government of China are not driven by democratic principles
that provides for checks on power.

The USA could have had an empire after WW2 and there was NO ONE IN THE WORLD
that could have stopped them. Instead the USA paid even more of their money to
re-built the world and help the countries which they fought.

The USA makes stupid mistakes sometimes, but they alway eventually sort it and
sort it on the right side of history even if it takes time.

~~~
meric
None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's".
What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe
for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents
do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my
grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2?
If she does I won't begrudge her for that. But you cannot claim I do.

~~~
perseusprime11
Can you point to any links that shows the chinese people protest on streets
about their Govt's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan? If they don't,
does that not mean they agree 100% with their Govt?

~~~
brettdong
'The Chinese people agree their government's stance on south china sea, Tibet
and Taiwan' doesn't mean 'they agree everything with their government'.

