Perspectives of China's HPC system development: a view from the 2009 China HPC TOP100 list

The China HPC TOP100 list, an annual report of the 100 most powerful high performance computing (HPC) systems installed in mainland China, has traced the rapid growth of HPC technology in China since its first publication in 2002. This paper introduces the China HPC TOP100 list and reviews the current status of HPC systems in China in terms of system features, manufactures, and areas of application using the data reported in the most recent list, published on November 1st, 2009. We provide further analysis, prediction of future trends, and directions of the development of HPC systems in China referencing historical data accumulated through archived TOP100 lists and other publically available information. We predict that the aggregated Linpack performance of the top 100 HPC systems will reach 10 PFlops in 2011, a single system with 10 PFlops peak performance will appear between 2012 and 2013, the aggregated performance of the top 100 systems will reach 100 PFlops in 2014, and a single system with 100 PFlops peak performance will appear around 2015.