
China suddenly has way more of the world’s most powerful computers than the US - fspeech
https://qz.com/1128704/china-has-way-more-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-computers-than-the-us/
======
fspeech
China's increase of 42 systems on Top500 is largely attributable to a single
company. Chinese "internet company A" (as labelled by Top500
[https://www.top500.org/site/50596](https://www.top500.org/site/50596)) is
presumably Alibaba, judging from its residence city of Hangzhou. It alone
counts for 35 new machines on the list since June! (Click on the history tab
to see the number for yourself.) I wonder if they are part of Alibaba's cloud
services or for internal uses. Either way presumably Alibaba sees commercial
value in owning them.

~~~
gresrun
It’s also rather misleading since the majority of computing resources in the
US are in “cloud” data centers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) and they never
bother to take the time to run Linpack on their clusters because making $$ is
more important. I would wager Google’s compute cells alone would constitute a
few dozen slots in the top 100.

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Kyragem
Because China doesn't believe in God but in Science. In the US we rather
subsidize churches to the tune of $70B a year than to invest in computing
infrastructure.

~~~
gscott
Churches provide services to communities far exceeding 70 billion. Trying to
judge churches on what some fringe groups and politicians do is short-sighted.

~~~
walkingolof
That service should be provided by the government, not a privileged special
interest group.

~~~
tete
I agree, however as someone coming from Europe I don't think that's easily
possible. The US seems to require means that don't sound socialist/communist
to some people. A lot of investment and subsidization into common good seems
to go the route through lowered or absence of taxes and other laws (non
profits, churches, etc.) and military (either research, that is later released
to the public, and that's not just GPS or infrastructure and services,
welfare, education for the poor, if they join the military).

To me it seems that both churches and military investment (in the very broad)
are essential and integral for the stability of the US.

I think whether this should be changed is debatable, however I don't think
this can be done over night, as it would destroy said stability. Even if a
majority could be gained for such a project I think it would have to be a very
slow process, as so many other things are built on this foundation and many
things seem to have been optimized for this system over time.

However, I am not an expert by any means and just rely on what I see, hear and
think when I compare it with Europe. The only thing I have learned is that
telling people to do it like others isn't something that can just be done -
while keeping some stability that is.

~~~
lostboys67
Germany has tithe taxes that supports churches

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hoodoof
The implication is that computing power has some inherent value, like a
country should stockpile it or something.

~~~
Retric
Much like electricity generation, unused computing power is useless but
capacity is very useful and tends to be consumed.

~~~
hoodoof
Yeah but there's no "computing race" in which countries compete to have more
computing power than the next, despite the implication of articles like this
that hint such a race would be important.

Makes not the slightest difference who has computing power. Its relevant only
if you have reason to use it, and even then might be completely pointless.

Gave me 100 Cray Y-MP computers and I can't think of a damn thing to do with
them. Countries are no different. Giving a country 100Mflops gives it nothing
over the next country without 100Mflops.

BUT what I would absolutely say is true is that politicians - those great scum
suckers at the bottom of the human pyramid - are highly likely to believe that
it is VERY important that a country does not get left behind in its
supercomputing power. Fuckwits. This is the sort of article that would send
politicians racing to spend government money on state run supercomputing
facilities which do..... nothing of any REAL value.

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komaromy
> China’s president Xi Jinping recently said the country is “taking a driving
> seat” in fighting climate change

One of the only things giving me hope right now.

~~~
PostOnce
[https://www.top500.org/green500/lists/2017/11/](https://www.top500.org/green500/lists/2017/11/)

There's also a Green500 list of most performance-per-watt, i.e. greenest, most
efficient computers, and Japan is the clear leader there.

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narrator
Ironic part is we denied them Nvidia chips so they built their own
supercomputer chips.

~~~
sddfd
Don't know if that is the reason, but China can build super computers without
US parts now.

~~~
gscott
China made a huge investment in AMD a year or two ago.

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lostboys67
Is this counting "black" systems or not :-) ie those run by TLA's defence etc
and never avowed

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dingo_bat
More interesting would be to find out what exactly they are doing with all
that power.

~~~
fspeech
If you go down the list
[https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=2](https://www.top500.org/list/2017/11/?page=2),
after about 100th place, many are listed as "web service providers" or
"service providers" or "internet companies".

~~~
alvis
probably many of them are bit coin miners.

~~~
generalizethis
Bitcoin is one word, but you are definitely on point about China's mining
prowess, those are asic miners, so not that super unless the figures are
swarmed based.

