Source: OSNews
Article note: Interesting. It appears to be a paper tiger whose memory system can't possibly feed its execution units. There are a lot of computers where this is true to some degree (almost all GPU heavy systems have "implausible" arithmetic:memory and arithmetic:memory bandwidth ratios even with fancy later-model HBM controllers and such), but this is (1) way worse and (2) across international relations boundaries that encourage rather than discourage pointing out the BS.
Sunway’s new supercomputer therefore feels like a system designed with the goal of landing high on some TOP500 lists. For that purpose, it’s perfect, providing a lot of throughput without wasting money on pesky things like cache, out-of-order execution, and high bandwidth memory. But from the perspective of solving a nation’s problems, I feel like Sunway is chasing a metric. A nation doing well in advanced technology might have a lot of supercomputer throughput, but more supercomputer throughput doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll solve technological problems faster.
A detailed look at China’s new supercomputer. The conclusion quoted above is very well supported by the data and research concerning this new supercomputer, and the article is a great read.
