Wall St. Journal: China HPC Programs not so Super

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Bob Davis from the Wall St. Journal writes that China’s much-vaunted supercomputer program is mired in local politics that has stymied innovation.

One of China’s greatest weaknesses is in software development, a potentially crippling problem because the usefulness of the machines depends on the quality of the software applications. Less than 10% of supercomputing funding goes to developing such applications, said Chinese researchers who complain that political leaders press them to build headline-grabbing new machines rather than focus on whether they are used to their full capabilities. In the U.S., which spends about six times as much on supercomputers as China, the software budget equals about 30% of hardware spending, and computer specialists say even that level isn’t sufficient.

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Comments

  1. I agree that in supercomputing China should spend more on software and also work as a team. But simply compare the numbers in dollars will lead to a biased result. Software cost is mostly spend on people. How many times more a software engineer in US costs more than in China?

  2. I dont think they need to invest a lot for a ground-up software,
    there are lots of free HPC software already,
    they just need to tailor it to their system.

    Why Reinvent the wheel, just customize it to your system

    Saves you tons of money,