By Peter Clarke, EE Times
China has reported the development of a supercomputer based on a domestically developed microprocessor, according to a New York Times report.
The Sunway BlueLight MPP was installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province in eastern China, in September, the report said. The computer can perform about 1,000 trillion calculations per second -- or 1-petaflop -- and comprises 8,704 ShenWhei SW1600 processors, it added. The computer has sophisticated water cooling system.
The ShenWei SW1600 is a third generation processor designed by the Jinan Computing Research Lab. The 16-core chip is capable of 140-Gflops at 1.1-GHz, according to reports. It is thought to have been designed in 2010 as part of line of chips with similarities to the DEC Alpha 21164 processor developed mainly for Chinese military use.
It is speculated that the SW3 was made in Shanghai by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp in a 65-nm CMOS process technology.
