[Beowulf] Chinese supercomputers to use ‘homemade’ chips

[Mark Hahn]

> Interesting:
> Chinese supercomputers to use ‘homemade’ chips
> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/Chinese-supercomputers-to-use-homemade-chips/articleshow/7655183.cms

it's important to remind ourselves that China is still a centrally-planned,
totalitarian dictatorship.  I mention this only because this announcement
is a bit like Putin et al announcing that they'll develop their own 
linux distro because Russia is big and important and mustn't allow 
itself to be vulnerable to foreign hegemony.

so far, the very shallow reporting I've seen has said that future 
generations will add wide FP vector units.  nothing wrong with that,
though it's a bit unclear to me why other companies haven't done it
if there is, in fact, lots of important vector codes that will run 
efficiently on such a configuration.  adding/widening vector FP is 
not breakthrough engineering afaikt.

has anyone heard anything juicy about the Tianhe interconnect?