Sunday, June 29, 2008

Chinese supercomputers cracks Top 10 list or does it?

Thanks to an anonymous reader for the investigation into an article posted on the Chindu quoting Xinhua without any factual accuracy.
Speed is relative. Most physicists would claim that barring the speed of light any other speed is relative. One of our readers questions Chindu's claim here --> http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/26/stories/2008062655661400.htm The reader states,
"China supercomputer enters top 10 list"

Chindu is mightily pleased, of course. However, Chindu, as usual, just vomits out what it has been spoon fed by Xinhua. Unfotunately, comrade-in-chief did not care to critically evaluate his master's claims and hence blind reporting such as "a Chinese-made high-performance server rivals the seventh fastest for computing speed." In the course of a discussion in the defence-related website (www.bharat-rakshak.com) these Chinese claims, faithfully reproduced by Chindu, have been questioned and exposed.

The Top500 website quoted by the reader lists the top 10 lead by IBM's Roadrunner which Chindu discounts,
“Roadrunner” was built for unspecified military applications, the Chinese super system, covering a floor space of 75 square metres, focuses on commercial use.

I'm sure the Chinese government has given the required permissions to Top500 to analyze all their government supercomputer projects. But I digress. The anonymous reader hits the nail on the head, when in the top 10 supercomputers list there is Tata Sons supercomputer,
For the second time, India placed a system in the top10. The Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own innovative routing technology and achieved a performance of 132.8 Tflop/s which was sufficient for No. 8.

The anonymous reader concludes with his thoughts on this topic,
Is the chindu the mouthpiece of xinhua in India, so much so that they fail to report Indian achievements? Should nt it be reasonable to accuse the chindu on treason charges?"

Props to Bharat Rakshak for their investigative post.
Maybe its time to question the Readers Editor about factual accuracy someone LiC decides to trumpet at every occasion. Thanks to our blog's readers for their investigative analysis.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

these are typically clustered systems, that you could build yourself if you had the money. buy a bunch of (well, atleast some 200-300 of) dell or HP servers with the latest CPUs, enough (4 or 8GB) memory per server, run linux, and connect them with a high speed interconnect switch (Gig-E, or infiniband). when they say 'china' built or 'india' built, we need to see how much of these components - servers, switches, server adapters or even cables - actually came from china or india. almost all of it comes from the 'great satan' or even the 'greater satan' (israel).

Tata sons seem to have done something innovative with the interconnects since the top500 press release has a explicit reference to it - you have mentioned that in the post.

i read the xinhua release in chindu. it seems to say they could have got into rank 7 in the june list if they had built it in time, and they got delayed because AMD delayed their processors. does not matter. and the rate of churn with these lists, in the next list in november, their current config is very unlikely to be matching the seventh spot. unless they throw more servers in.

all these apart, you really have to hate those stupid tambrahms who still pay their money to chindu.

Anonymous said...

The point to be noted here is Chindu's habit of forcing arbitrary, unverified and hyped pro-China claims on us as "news". Since this is a technology related news item, we could easily get the truth from the web. But Chindu and LiC do make such hyped arbitrary pro-China claims about political/social situations in China and this is a clear indication of how one should see all those news items.

Anonymous said...

It is also interesting to compare, how Chindu reported this China's mere claim and India's listed achievement of the same. It appears that they didn't report anything about Tata supercomputer's achievement this time (that is, India being in Top 10 for the second time, in this June list of top 10).

But in last november, Chindu seems to have reported it. But it is interesting to compare it with China news!

See: 26 June 2008, The Hindu front page:

http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/26/01hdline.htm

In the front page, in bold and large size letters they have written "China supercomputer enters top 10 list"

Note: as shown here in the post, in the official list China is not there! but still Chindu screams with "China" in the title!


Now compare it with their news when Indian firm really achieved the same (India was officially listed; not a mere "claim"!)

See: Nov 11, 2007, The Hindu front page:

http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/14/01hdline.htm

It's not there in the main headlines shown in bold. But somewhere at the bottom in small letters you will find

"Fourth fastest computer in the world".

No India's name; no bold letters; no highlighting!

Compare this with the title they gave for China's unverified claims!

Anonymous said...

To Annon 1 : //you really have to hate those stupid tambrahms who still pay their money to chindu //

I find most of the regular leaders are more tuned towards non political details. Most of them with whom I could check up with, they avoid political news (no matter what Ram and Co try to project) altogether. For non political coverage, still Chindu is relatively better compared to other news papers.

Like any comrades, Commie philosophy is just for publication, but when it comes to selfish benefits, they dont hesitate to compromise anything. Hindu's strategy is two progred : Retain the existing base. Hindu's editor engage closely with Tamil brahmins association and I recall that MD (Murali) even received some sort of an award from brahmins association. 2. Develop new base. The easy way to do is cover more anti hindu (thinking that this will appeal to non-Hindus), anti brahmin (again to portray that they are unbiased).

It's worthwhile to note old days Hindu's editorial. For example, refer these links. You will realize the tectonic shifts...

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/05/29/stories/10291045.htm
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2000/11/04/stories/10041045.htm

Anonymous said...

anonymous-3 - it is a good thing you digged last year's report. even in that report on Tata's rank 4 last year, chindu's patriotism shows thru in this para -

"The other countries in the List include compared 10 of China, 11 of Taiwan, 20 of Japan, 31 of Germany, 17 of France, 9 of Spain, 48 of the U.K. and 283 of the U.S. Interestingly only one Korean system has made the grade."

note how the other countries list is sorted to bring china on top.

we should live to see the collapse of political communism in china, by the grace of all of our Gods. if not that, atleast the demise of the 'permanent' government of west bengal.

Anonymous said...

>> Most of them with whom I could check up with, they avoid political news (no matter what Ram and Co try to project) altogether. For non political coverage, still Chindu is relatively better compared to other news papers. >>

anon-4 -
their money still goes to the kitty of the communist for him to do more of this s*it, and top up the payments he gets from his masters.

if those tambrahms want news, for local news they can get any of the tamil papers. even dinakaran would be better now. and for national/international news, there is really no dearth of sources.

Anonymous said...

It may be some kind of a Pavlovian problem for the Chindu loyalists. Morning filter coffee can not be gulped without the Chindu on hand. At least, one more generation got to go before this changes.