Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2010 21:20:42 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: China's supercomputer To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter I've gotten quite a bit of mail on China new supercomputer, "the fastest in the world." The NYT article enclosed below provides the details. This "news" will undoubtedly be used for lobbying by everyone from the immigration lawyers ("We need to give foreign students instant green cards to prevent them from going home and competing with us") to universities (demanding more money for computing research) to the industry lobbyists (more H-1Bs, generous tax breaks for research). Well, anytime you hear about some "super" this or that, you should become skeptical. For that matter, anytime you hear from the above parties--immigration lawyers, universities and industry lobbyists--you should be deeply suspicious. :-) Add in the fact that this case here is about China, a nation whose actions, both positive and negative, are magnified to the point of caricature these days by politicians and the press, and you have the ultimate hype machine ready to go. Parallel processing happens to be one of my computer science research areas, and this new machine is just not a big deal. It sounds like its interconnect, which they've named Arch, might be interesting, but overall, it's quite analogous to building the world's tallest skyscraper--if you really want such bragging rights, you can get them if you spend enough money and devote enough engineers to it. In spite of what the NYT says, your Pringles are safe. :-) Actually, this NYT piece is one of the most carefully researched articles I've seen on technology in the popular press for some time. First, the reporter does question the hype, making the same "throw enough money at it" point that I do above, Second, in the same vein the reporter quotes Wallach, whom I don't know, but who correctly not only downplays the hype but also shows keen insight into current Chinese government psychology: # “They want to show they are No. 1 in the world, no matter what it is,” # Mr. Wallach said. “I don’t blame them.” I've mentioned before that this obsession for visibility has caused the Chinese government to take various technology-related actions that I believe are not in its best interests, notably in the universities. Though Chinese culture (not just educational structure) generally produces uncreative plodders, in a nation of one billion there ARE some extremely innovative people. China has to do much more to DEVELOP--rather than suppress--its really creative thinkers, but sadly it is going in the opposite direction. It's encouraging the academics to publish a lot of little papers that make, at most, incremental advances. Unfortunately, just when Chinese academia had really begun to make progress a few years ago, suddenly the government decided to reward "quantity instead of quality." Thus though there are indeed some genuinely good results here and there, there is also a tremendous opportunity cost in this for China, in that the best minds are often encouraged to produce poor results in the name of quantity. This tragic waste was also noted in the Washington Post article that I'm enclosing below, which among other things remarks that "China is also the leading source of what are known as 'junk' patents." I suppose U.S. policymakers might read my comments above and say, "OK, maybe that supercomputer is not anything to worry about after all, but isn't it important that China is investing so heavily in technology?" This may well be true, but the solution is not to spend more dollars ourselves. Dollars are always welcome, of course, but instead, we should stop U.S. policies that force our own talented engineers out of the field, through importing foreign workers to compete with them and rewarding offshoring with tax breaks. And should end the absolutely disgraceful policies that virtually force U.S. science Bachelor's graduates NOT to pursue PhDs. We have a huge advantage over our biggest "competitors," India and China, in the form of our creativity and knack for innovation. But instead, our policies are pushing OUR best and brightest into pursuing MBAs and law degrees instead of doctorates in science and engineering. That this is the height of stupidity ought to be obvious to our policymakers--so why don't they see it? Norm New York Times China Wrests Supercomputer Title From U.S. By ASHLEE VANCE Published: October 28, 2010 A Chinese scientific research center has built the fastest supercomputer ever made, replacing the United States as maker of the swiftest machine, and giving China bragging rights as a technology superpower. The Tianhe-1A computer in Tianjin, China, links thousands upon thousands of chips. The computer, known as Tianhe-1A, has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer, which is at a national laboratory in Tennessee, as measured by the standard test used to gauge how well the systems handle mathematical calculations, said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings. Although the official list of the top 500 fastest machines, which comes out every six months, is not due to be completed by Mr. Dongarra until next week, he said the Chinese computer "blows away the existing No. 1 machine." He added, "We don't close the books until Nov. 1, but I would say it is unlikely we will see a system that is faster." Officials from the Chinese research center, the National University of Defense Technology, are expected to reveal the computer's performance on Thursday at a conference in Beijing. The center says it is "under the dual supervision of the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Education." The race to build the fastest supercomputer has become a source of national pride as these machines are valued for their ability to solve problems critical to national interests in areas like defense, energy, finance and science. Supercomputing technology also finds its way into mainstream business; oil and gas companies use it to find reservoirs and Wall Street traders use it for superquick automated trades. Procter & Gamble even uses supercomputers to make sure that Pringles go into cans without breaking. And typically, research centers with large supercomputers are magnets for top scientific talent, adding significance to the presence of the machines well beyond just cranking through calculations. Over the last decade, the Chinese have steadily inched up in the rankings of supercomputers. Tianhe-1A stands as the culmination of billions of dollars in investment and scientific development, as China has gone from a computing afterthought to a world technology superpower. "What is scary about this is that the U.S. dominance in high-performance computing is at risk," said Wu-chun Feng, a supercomputing expert and professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "One could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future." Modern supercomputers are built by combining thousands of small computer servers and using software to turn them into a single entity. In that sense, any organization with enough money and expertise can buy what amount to off-the-shelf components and create a fast machine. The Chinese system follows that model by linking thousands upon thousands of chips made by the American companies Intel and Nvidia. But the secret sauce behind the system -- and the technological achievement -- is the interconnect, or networking technology, developed by Chinese researchers that shuttles data back and forth across the smaller computers at breakneck rates, Mr. Dongarra said. "That technology was built by them," Mr. Dongarra said. "They are taking supercomputing very seriously and making a deep commitment." The Chinese interconnect can handle data at about twice the speed of a common interconnect called InfiniBand used in many supercomputers. For decades, the United States has developed most of the underlying technology that goes into the massive supercomputers and has built the largest, fastest machines at research laboratories and universities. Some of the top systems simulate the effects of nuclear weapons, while others predict the weather and aid in energy research. In 2002, the United States lost its crown as supercomputing kingpin for the first time in stunning fashion when Japan unveiled a machine with more horsepower than the top 20 American computers combined. The United States government responded in kind, forming groups to plot a comeback and pouring money into supercomputing projects. The United States regained its leadership status in 2004, and has kept it, until now. At the computing conference on Thursday in China, the researchers will discuss how they are using the new system for scientific research in fields like astrophysics and bio-molecular modeling. Tianhe-1A, which is housed in a building at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, can perform mathematical operations about 29 million times faster than one of the earliest supercomputers, built in 1976. For the record, it performs 2.5 times 10 to the 15th power mathematical operations per second. Mr. Dongarra said a long-running Chinese project to build chips to rival those from Intel and others remained under way and looked promising. "It's not quite there yet, but it will be in a year or two," he said. He also said that in November, when the list comes out, he expected a second Chinese computer to be in the top five, culminating years of investment. "The Japanese came out of nowhere and really caught people off guard," Mr. Feng said. "With China, you could see this one coming." Steven J. Wallach, a well-known computer designer, played down the importance of taking the top spot on the supercomputer rankings. "It's interesting, but it's like getting to the four-minute mile," Mr. Wallach said. "The world didn't stop. This is just a snapshot in time." The research labs often spend weeks tuning their systems to perform well on the standard horsepower test. But just because a system can hammer through trillions of calculations per second does not mean it will do well on the specialized jobs that researchers want to use it for, Mr. Wallach added. The United States has plans in place to make much faster machines out of proprietary components and to advance the software used by these systems so that they are easy for researchers to use. But those computers remain years away, and for now, China is king. "They want to show they are No. 1 in the world, no matter what it is," Mr. Wallach said. "I don't blame them." A version of this article appeared in print on October 28, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition. China pushing the envelope on science, and sometimes ethics By John Pomfret Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 28, 2010; A01 SHENZHEN, CHINA -- Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he's probing the genetic basis for human IQ. Zhao is 17. Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess -- think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word -- China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China's scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research. Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the limits of ethics and principle as they create a new -- and to many, worrisome -- Wild West in the Far East. A decade ago, no one considered China a scientific competitor. Its best and brightest agreed and fled China in a massive brain drain to university research labs at Harvard, Stanford and MIT. But over the past five years, Western-educated scientists and gutsy entrepreneurs have conducted a rearguard action, battling China's hidebound bureaucracy to establish research institutes and companies. Those have lured home scores of Western-trained Chinese researchers dedicated to transforming the People's Republic of China into a scientific superpower. "They have grown so fast and so suddenly that people are still skeptical," said Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California at Berkeley who collaborates with Chinese counterparts. "But we should get used to it. There is competition from China now, and it's really quite drastic how things have changed." China has invested billions in improving its scientific standing. Almost every Chinese ministry has some sort of program to win a technological edge in everything from missiles to medicine. Beijing's minister of science and technology, Wan Gang, will visit the United States in early July and is expected to showcase some of China's successes. In May, for example, a supercomputer produced in China was ranked the world's second-fastest machine at an international conference in Germany. China is now in fourth place, tied with Germany, in terms of the number of supercomputers. China has jumped to second place -- up from 14th in 1995 -- behind the United States in the number of research articles published in scientific and technical journals worldwide. Backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Chinese medical researchers, partnering with a firm in the United States, beat out an Indian team last year to develop a new test for cervical cancer that costs less than $5. The goal is to test 10 million Chinese women within three years. Chinese engineers have significantly improved on Western and Soviet coal-gasification technology as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to create green Chinese energy. Action, not research "The action is here," said S. Ming Sung, the chief Asia-Pacific representative for the Clean Air Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprofit entity, and a former Shell Oil executive. "In the U.S., there are too many paper researchers. Here, they are doing things." Meanwhile, Chinese military researchers appear to be on the cusp of a significant breakthrough: a land-based anti-ship ballistic missile that is causing concern within the U.S. Navy. In 2007, Chinese geneticists discovered vast differences in the genetic makeup of Africans, Asians and Caucasians. They will soon report a breakthrough showing why some people -- such as Tibetans -- can live effortlessly at high altitudes while others can't. There are challenges. China is still considered weak at innovation, and Chinese bureaucrats routinely mandate discoveries -- fantasy-world marching orders that Western scientists view as absurd. In 2008, the Ministry of Science and Technology gave researchers two years to come up with 30 medicines ready for clinical trials and only five days to apply for grants to fund the work. That's despite the fact that since the communist revolution in 1949, China has developed only one internationally recognized drug -- Artemisinin -- to fight malaria. Chinese science and technology is also awash in scams and sometimes-troubling practices. More than 200 institutions in China practice controversial stem cell therapies for people suffering from injuries, diseases or birth defects. Although the government moved last year to regulate the industry, none of the techniques has been subjected to rigorous clinical trials. China is also the leading source of what are known as "junk" patents -- ridiculous claims of "inventions" that are little more than snake-oil scams. "This discovery is going to shake the world!" bellowed Liu Jian, chief executive of Hualong Fertilizer Technique Co. Liu says he has developed a method to reduce fertilizer use by half through the use of nanotechnology, although officials at the Agriculture Ministry mock the claim. "Will you help us raise some capital?" Liu asked in an interview. Finally, plagiarism and doctored results seem to be as common as chopsticks. A study by Wuhan University uncovered an entire industry of bogus report and thesis writers who raked in $145 million last year, a fivefold increase since 2007. The emergence of China as a nascent scientific superpower raises questions about the U.S. relationship with Beijing. Ever since the United States opened the door to Chinese students in the 1970s, hundreds of thousands have flocked to America. Most have studied science or engineering and have been welcomed in research institutions across the land. But with China becoming a competitor, U.S. experts have begun to question that practice. FBI officials allege that there is a large-scale operation in the United States to pilfer American industrial, scientific, technological and military secrets. In the past few years, dozens of Chinese have been convicted of stealing American technology and shipping it to China. "The science and technology relationship with China has always stood up against all kinds of political pressures," said Richard P. Suttmeier, who has researched China's rise for the National Science Foundation. "Now that you have competition going on, finding the basis for cooperation in the absence of trust is an issue. It goes to questions of espionage and a hunger for technology." That hunger is evident in the halls of BGI, home to Zhao Bowen and more than 1,500 other Chinese scientists and technicians. Located in an industrial zone in the southern Chinese megalopolis of Shenzhen, BGI has grown into one of the world's leading genomics institutes devoted to deciphering the genetic blueprint of organisms. Over the past few years, scientists at BGI sequenced the genes of a chicken, a silkworm, a panda, a strain of rice and 4,000-year-old human remains from Greenland. In January, BGI made the biggest purchase of genome sequencing equipment ever, buying 128 ultra-high-tech machines from California-based Illumina. With that one acquisition, BGI could very well surpass the entire gene-sequencing output of the United States. Shunning dictates Inside the 11-story facility, the vibe is pure Silicon Valley start-up: shorts, flip-flops, ankle bracelets, designer eyewear and a random tattoo. Zhao came to BGI on a summer internship last year to work on cucumbers. Now a full-time employee while continuing his studies, Zhao is turning his attention to a topic Western researchers have shied away from because of ethical worries: Zhao plans to study the genes of 1,000 of his best-performing classmates at a top high school in Beijing and compare them, he said, "with 1,000 normal kids." BGI's secret -- and the secret to a lot of China's best scientific institutes -- seems to be insulating itself from China's government bureaucracy. BGI started as the Beijing Genomics Institute in the early 2000s but left Beijing in 2007 after the Ministry of Science and Technology tried to dictate what it could and could not study. The Shenzhen city government offered it millions of dollars in grants and operating expenses to move south. Last year, BGI received a $1.5 billion line of credit from the China Development Bank. "We came here because it was the best place for us to pursue science," said Yang Huanming, the institute's founder. "We're not interested in politics." By far, China's most successful research institution is the National Institute for Biological Sciences, known as NIBS, which is responsible for half of the peer-reviewed publications in China. The institute's 23 principal investigators, its director and deputy director are all returnees from the United States. It's also the only major research institute in China that does not have a Communist Party secretary. Luo Minmin, 37, a neurobiologist, returned to China six years ago after getting his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and completing a postdoctoral research stint at Duke. Luo said he has a big budget at NIBS and greater research freedom than he would have in the United States. He's studying a gene involved in attention-deficit disorder. "If I had stayed in America, the chances of making a discovery would have been lower," he said. "Here, people are willing to take risks. They give you money, and essentially you can do whatever you want."