Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them
Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications
October 08, 2012
DreamWorks Outsources Animation Work to Chinese Petaflopper
China's number one supercomputer, Tianhe-1A, is apparently in the movie-making business. An article in China Daily this week reports that the 2010 TOP500 crown-winner is being used to help create animated films for DreamWorks. 
Tianhe-1A delivers 2.5 peak Linpack petaflops, which still earns it 5th place on the current list. It's one of a new breed of hybrid CPU-GPU petaflop systems that are making their presence felt in the upper echelons of supercomputing.
The Tianhe-1A animation work is being done in conjunction with a local rendering firm: Cool Cartoon in Tianjin. According to the company's chairman, Hu Yong, they're in the process of developing a data transmission system for sending the rendered output back to clients in North America.
Super-rendering is just one Tianhe-1A task though. The article also describes work being done to support the country's first official 3D map, Tianditu, China's version of Google Earth. According to Meng Xiangfei, who heads the application group at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, where Tianhe-1A is hosted, they're developing software that will improve the quality of the 3D map.
The supercomputer is also being used for seismic simulations at BGP, a geophysical service company, which is affiliated with China National Petroleum Corp, the country's largest supplier of oil and gas. According to Meng, the simulation software was developed locally to reduce their dependency on foreign ISVs.
Car manufacturer Tianjin Motor Dies also has managed to get time on Tianhe-1A, which it uses to design car body panels and large stamping parts. According to company experts there, the design work will allow them to grow their market and move from low-end products to high-end products.
The China Daily piece didn't describe how much of the supercomputer's 4.7 peak petaflops are being employed for these workloads. CPU-GPU systems such as these are still proving themselves in the application domain. Later this year, the largest US-based GPU-accelerated supercomputer, Titan, will be up and running at Oak Ridge National Lab, and start moving DOE and other science applications into the hybrid computing domain.
Full story at China Daily
Discussion
There are 0 discussion items posted.
|
Join the Discussion |
Sponsored Links
Join Michael Wolfe as he compares the advantages and costs of using both low-level models and the directive-based OpenACC model for programming accelerated heterogeneous systems. Registration is free.
Accelerate your science with Seneca
One of the first HPC providers installing a 4X NVIDIA Kepler K-20 cluster. Invites you to a free evaluation on Seneca’s NVIDIA K20 Kepler cluster, pre-loaded with AMBER, NAMD, LAMMPS
High-Performance Computing in Action
Businesses that want to be on the cutting edge of their industries are increasingly turning to high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to handle complex compute processes and speed up their rate of innovation. Download this Executive Brief to see how businesses in energy, life sciences and entertainment put HPC solutions to work in their operations.
- The Accelerated Genomics Cloud $25,000 Giveaway
- Introducing the Cray CS300 Cluster Supercomputer Series
- Memory Debugging Challenges in Parallel and Distributed Applications
- Visualize Historical Usage for Optimized Returns on HPC Investments
- Acer and Altair simplify cluster computing
- Receive Higher Application Performance with end-to-end 56GbE
- PGI 2013: OpenMP 1.5X faster than GCC, new GNU-compatible OpenACC C++ compiler, CUDA 5 and Tesla K20 support, and more.
- ClusterStor™ 1500 – High Performance Efficiency
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
- Features
- Blogs
- Short Takes
- Off the Wire
- Whitepapers
- Multimedia
- HPC Soundbite Podcasts
- HPCwire Job Bank
Subscribe to All Content
May 20, 2013
- Cray and VBRX to Host Event for Upstream Applications in Oil and Gas
- Dell to Deliver Public Cloud Through Partner Ecosystem
- Mentor and Tezzaron Optimize Calibre 3DSTACK for 2.5/3D-ICs
- Cloud Provider Selects Mellanox's InfiniBand as Their Cloud Interconnect
- Xyratex to Present at Barclay Telco and Media Event
May 17, 2013
May 16, 2013
- D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New AI Initiative
- Mines' Powerful New Supercomputer to Focus on Energy Research
- Kitware Develops Customizable Simulation Framework to Provide HPC for Mid-Sized Manufacturers
- Next HPC Installation Step Initiated at High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart
- HybridCluster2.0 Self-Healing, Ultra-High Availability Capabilities Unveiled
May 15, 2013
- Nominations for SC13 Cray, Fernbach and Kennedy Awards Due July 1
- Mellanox Technologies Ltd. Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Kotura, Inc.
- NYSERDA Awards $1.8 Million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Bright Computing Named Finalist for the 2013 Red Herring Top 100 North America Award
- Flow Science Releases FLOW-3D/MP 5.0
- NEC Establishes NEC Ukraine to Strengthen Operations in Russia and the CIS
- Fujitsu Receives Supercomputer Order From Nagoya University
- Avere Systems Helps Framestore Create Extraordinary Visual Effects for Blockbuster Films
- Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Exascale Systems Call for Papers
May 14, 2013
- Multimillion Pound Project to Develop Next Generation Computing Systems
- HPC Simulations Target Nanoscale Materials Under Strain
- New IBM Center in Beijing to Speed Linux Applications on Power Systems
- OpenCL Software Development Kit Fosters FPGA Exploitation
- S&P Capital IQ and Kuberre Systems Sign Data Facilitator Agreement
- Solarflare to Speak at Linux Foundation Enterprise End User Summit
May 13, 2013
- SDSC Hosts First Annual Industry Partners Research Review
- AMD Targets Server Performance with Open 3.0 Release
- BICS Selects Infinera DTN-X for 500G Pan-European Network
- Juniper Systems Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
May 10, 2013
- Two ORNL Researchers, Two Joint Faculty Receive DOE Early Career Awards
- ODCA to Hypervisor and VM Providers: Interoperability is an Enterprise Cloud Requirement
- Special ISC’13 Session to Probe the Thinking behind Europe’s Human Brain Project
May 09, 2013
- Ireland Sprouts Native Top Supercomputer List
- Durham University Cluster Boosts Study of the Stars
- Supermicro Ships New 4U 72x 3.5" Hot-Swappable HDD Storage Platform
- Two Virginia Tech Teams Named Finalists in DARPA Spectrum Challenge
May 08, 2013
- Cloud-Ready GlusterFS 3.4 Beta Now Available
- NCSA Hosts 2013 Private Sector Program Annual Meeting May 13-17 in Champaign/Urbana.
- Seagate Unveils Complete SSD Product Line
- Clustered Systems Installs Efficient 100kW Rack at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Penguin Computing Named Open Compute Project Solution Provider
- Silicon Mechanics Shows Computing and Storage Platforms at TechKnowFile
- OrangeFS Available on AWS Marketplace
- Teradata Introduces In-Memory Technology that Supports Big Data Deployments
Most Read Features
- Adapteva Shows Off $99 Supercomputer Boards
- "No Exascale for You!" An Interview with Berkeley Lab's Horst Simon
- Cray Answers Mid-Market's Call
- The Week in HPC Research
- A Conversation with Dr. Hans Meuer and Dr. Horst Gietl
- Saddling Phi for TACC’s Stampede
- Intel’s Big Data to HPC Interconnect
- Supercomputing Vet Champions Quantum Cause
- The Week in HPC Research
- NERSC Managers Shed Light on 'Edison'
Most Read Around the Web
- Speaking Many Languages into the MIC
- Floating Funding to Exascale Island
- Supercomputing's Golden Age?
- New Tome Tells Modern History of Supercomputing
- Sequoia Hits Warp Speed
- HPC and the True Cost of Cloud
- Revolutionizing Tornado Prediction
- CUDA-Designed Robot: It's a Hit!
- Finnish Researchers Welcome New Cray Super
- Running Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Cloud
Most Read This Just In
- IBM and Forrester Webinar to Discuss New Ways to Reduce Cost in HPC and Big Data
- Altera Opens FPGAs to Programmers with SDK, Off-the-Shelf Boards for OpenCL
- D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New AI Initiative
- New Simulation Speed Record Achieved with Sequoia Supercomputer
- Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing Taking Place July 28 - Aug. 9
- AMD Targets Server Performance with Open 3.0 Release
- Brain Outperforms Supercomputers
- Vicor's ChiP Power Component Packaging to Make European Debut at PCIM Europe 2013
- Commercial Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems Launches
- Mines' Powerful New Supercomputer to Focus on Energy Research
Feature Articles
Saddling Phi for TACC’s Stampede
The Xeon Phi coprocessor might be the new kid on the high performance block, but out of all first-rate kickers of the Intel tires, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) got the first real jab with its new top ten Stampede system.We talk with the center's Karl Schultz about the challenges of programming for Phi--but more specifically, the optimization...
Read more...
"No Exascale for You!" An Interview with Berkeley Lab's Horst Simon
Although Horst Simon was named Deputy Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he maintains his strong ties to the scientific computing community as an editor of the TOP500 list and as an invited speaker at conferences.
Read more...
Supercomputing Vet Champions Quantum Cause
Supercomputing veteran, Bo Ewald, has been neck-deep in bleeding edge system development since his twelve-year stint at Cray Research back in the mid-1980s, which was followed by his tenure at large organizations like SGI and startups, including Scale Eight Corporation and Linux Networx. He has put his weight behind quantum company....
Read more...
Sponsored Whitepapers
Best Practices in Big Data Storage
05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.
Progress in Parallel: the Bull Parallel Programming Center
04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.
Sponsored Multimedia
SGI DMF ZeroWatt Disk Solution
In this demonstration of SGI DMF ZeroWatt disk solution, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, discusses a function of SGI DMF software to reduce costs and power consumption in an exascale (Big Data) storage datacenter.
Cray CS300-AC Cluster Supercomputer Air Cooling Technology Video
The Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer offers energy efficient, air-cooled design based on modular, industry-standard platforms featuring the latest processor and network technologies and a wide range of datacenter cooling requirements.
HPC Job Bank
Featured Events
- June 13, 2013
- June 14, 2013
Think Beyond Plastics Conference
Berkeley, CA
United States
- June 16, 2013
- June 20, 2013
ISC'13
Leipzig,
Germany
.gif)
- June 17, 2013
- June 18, 2013
Forecast 2013
San Francisco, CA
United States
- June 20, 2013
- June 21, 2013
CIO North America
Marina Del Rey, CA
United States
- June 24, 2013
- June 25, 2013
The Trading Show Chicago
Chicago, IL
United States
- June 25, 2013
- June 26, 2013
TERATEC 2013 Forum
Paris,
France
