Chinese supercomputer project wins top int'l prize

For the first time, a Chinese team today won the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize, a top honour in high-performance computing, for an application running on China's fastest supercomputer.
The project, named "10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics," presents a method for calculating atmospheric dynamics, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, which presented the award at the International Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City in the US.
"The application can help improve global climate simulation and weather prediction," Yang Guangwen, director of the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi told state-run Xinhua news agency.
The centre, also one of the application developers, is home to Sunway Taihulight, the supercomputer that runs the application. It is the first time a Chinese team has won the award.

Earlier Sunway Taihulighwon title of the fastest supercomputer. China won it for the eighth successive year.
The award shows that Taihulight not only excels in terms of speed, but can also be a powerful platform for a wide range of applications, said Yang.

Since its launch on June 20, Sunway Taihulight has helped research teams in both China and abroad make over 100 achievements in 19 different fields, including meteorology, oceanography, aerospace and biology, Yang said.
According to the International Supercomputing Conference, China has 171 of the world's top 500 supercomputers, tied for first place with the United States.
Established in 1987, the Gordon Bell Prize is awarded each year at the annual supercomputing conference.

It recognises outstanding achievements in high-performance computing applications.