China’s Supercomputer Power!! A challenge to the US?

Supercomputers are extensively used in complex projects such as weather system modeling, simulation of nuclear explosions, and designs of jetliners. China has now muscled into No. 2 rank among the world’s fastest supercomputer nations overtaking European and Japanese systems. It is just behind US Department of Energy’s Jaguar in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

China’s Dawning Nebulae system at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen province reports an astounding computing speed of 1.27 petaflops, which is the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations per second. Last year, China came out with its supercomputer named Tianhe capable of more than 1 petaflop or 1 quadrillion operations per second. The latest version is a step ahead of this and costs 600 million yuan ($88 million). China-made CPU is expected to be added to the Milki Way supercomputer in the future for boosting its speed further.

The latest Chinese achievement pushes its ranking higher among the world’s fastest 500 competitors. This list was compiled jointly by Germany’s University of Mannheim, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, US and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

This supercomputer was introduced to the world at the International Supercomputer Conference held recently in Hamburg, Germany. The use of the Nividia GPU (graphic processing unit) accelerator enabled this success.

But the US still leads the rest of the nations in the field of supercomputers.

Source: Google

Image: Google

First carbon-free polar station

A zero-emission polar research station, carbon-free opened in Antarctica on February 15, 2009. Hailed by scientists all over the world, this kindles hopes of viable alternative energy even in the coldest region on the earth. This station built by Belgium called the Princess Elisabeth draws renewable natural wind and solar power for its needs, which cost nothing at all. Of course problems such as designing installations to survive extreme cold, and winter darkness have to be encountered in the process, but the scientists are hopeful about that too. It is claimed that solar panels on the Antarctic Peninsula can collect as much energy in a year as many places in Europe.

Yes, green power is a feasibility to be considered seriously especially in the light of the ongoing damage by global warming from greenhouse emissions. If we can build such a station in Antarctica, we can do that elsewhere at more congenial places on the earth to save the earth from further global warming.

The present polar station in Antarctica is a steel-encased station and uses micro-organisms and decomposition that helps researchers to re-use shower and toilet water up to five times before ultimately dumping it in a crevasse. Wind tunnels installed on the Utsteinen mountain ridge and the solar panels on bug-like three-story building supply the most essential power and hot water. Even its window designs contribute to energy conservation.

Jean Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said failure to reduce emissions by 50 to 85 percent by the middle of this century could be catastrophic. "Globally we will be in a temperature increase zone that the earth has not known for the past two to three million years," he said

Here is a warning for all of us from the scientists monitoring global warming. Higher global temperatures result in faster melting of the Antarctica, which is the world’s largest repository of fresh water thus raising sea levels and altering shorelines. Let each one of us become fully aware of this danger and save Mother Earth for our progeny. Let us save the earth for future generations.

Source: Times of India, February 17, 2009