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China overtakes U.S. supercomputing lead

By Robert F. ServiceJun. 20, 2016 , 5:15 PM
China has claimed two computing crowns. A new supercomputer at China’s National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi in Jiangsu province has snagged the top spot on the latest TOP500 list of supercomputers, which was unveiled today at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. The new machine, known as the Sunway TaihuLight, has a peak performance of 93 petaflop per second (Pflop/s), or 93 quadrillion calculations per second. That’s nearly three times the performance of its closest competitor, Tianhe-2, another Chinese supercomputer, and nearly 2 million times faster than a standard laptop. More important, for the first time China has overtaken the United States as the country with the largest installed supercomputing capacity.

“We’re seeing an inflection point,” says Horst Simon, a supercomputing expert and deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Simon and a few other supercomputer experts update the TOP500 list twice a year to track trends in their field. Countries other than the United States have previously claimed the top spot for an individual machine’s performance, but this is the first time another country has eclipsed the United States in total supercomputing power. “We’ve seen this trend building for the last few years,” says Wu Feng, a supercomputing expert at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. “It shows that China is committed to a sustained investment in high-performance computing.”

According to the TOP500 list, China now has 167 of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, with a total capacity of 211 Pflop/s. The United States has 165 of the top machines, with a cumulative capacity of 173 Pflop/s. That’s a reversal of the rankings 15 years ago, when the United States had more than half of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, Simon says. Europe’s share, meanwhile, has dropped to 105 systems with a combined capacity of 115 Pflop/s. China’s supercomputing crown could pay off not just for research and engineering but for commerce: Chinese companies already have a 34% market share in the global market for supercomputers, a percentage that is growing fast. And Haohuan Fu, a supercomputer expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says the Chinese government is making a concerted effort to support supercomputing to propel advances in everything from life sciences research to manufacturing design for its companies.

According to Jack Dongarra, a supercomputing expert at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who keeps close tabs on international trends, China is expected to add another machine comparable to the Sunway supercomputer either late this year or early in 2017. The United States, meanwhile, isn’t expected to have one in the 100 Pflop/s range until the end of 2017. The most powerful U.S. machine, ranked third overall, is Titan, a 17.59 Pflop/s supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

China is now looking to extend its lead. Chinese officials announced recently that they expect to produce their first machine capable of running at 1000 Pflop/s, or 1 exaflop/s, in 2020. Such exascale machines should dramatically speed up a host of scientific and industrial computing tasks, such as modeling climate change and the activity of the human brain, searching for new high-performance materials, and designing energy-efficient car engines. DOE, which heads U.S. supercomputing efforts, has said it doesn’t expect to build its first exascale supercomputer until 2023 at the earliest, a target that has already slipped several years.

The Sunway machine marks a noteworthy step toward those goals, Dongarra says. The new supercomputer is powered by more than 10.6 million processor chips, which were designed and built in China, and consumes 15.4 megawatts (MW) of power. That means the Sunway machine carries out 6 billion calculations per watt, making it the third most efficient supercomputer ever designed. “That’s quite remarkable,” Simon says. “Usually the top systems are not at the top in efficiency.”

Even so, simply scaling up the current Sunway system to exascale is impractical, as the resulting machine would require on the order of 150 MW, enough to power thousands of homes. It’s more likely, Simon says, that achieving the computational efficiency needed to get to exascale will require technologies still under development, such as low-power 3D memory chips and links between processors that pass data as light instead of electrons.

An exascale machine could have payoffs beyond high-end computing. Although the worldwide market for supercomputers themselves is modest—smaller than sales of conventional consumer electronics—Simon and others note that supercomputing technology often trickles down to consumer markets. So if China’s researchers are the first to come up with the technology breakthroughs needed to reach exascale, the feat could supercharge their consumer electronics industry and spell danger for other electronics giants around the globe

IITs, TIFR top in industry, government collaboration: Study
The Indian Institutes of Technology and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) have emerged as leaders in university-industry-government (UIG) collaborations in the last decade, according to new analysis of India's research and innovation landscape

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released the examination calendar for the year 2017. It carries on recruitment to services and posts under the union by conducting various competitive examinations. Check out the list of various important exams, along with their exam dates.

Engineering Services (Preliminary) Examination:

It is conducted for recruiting candidates into various vacant posts in the civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, electronics , telecommunications engineering and other government departments.

Release date for notification: September 28
Exam: January 8, 2017
C.D.S. EXAM.(I):

It is conducted for recruiting candidates to the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Officers Training Academy (OTA), Indian Naval Academy (INA) and Indian Air Force Academy (IAF).

Release date for notification: November 9
Exam: February 5
CISF AC(EXE) LDCE-2017:

It is conducted for recruiting candidates for the post of Assistant Commandants in Central Industrial Security Force.

Release date for notification: December 7
Exam: March 5
N.D.A. and N.A. EXAM.(I):

It is conducted for recruiting candidates to the army, air force and navy wings.

Release date for notification: January 18
Exam: April 23
I.E.S./I.S.S. EXAM

It is conducted for recruiting candidates into grade IV vacancies in the Indian Economics Service (IES) and the Indian Statistical Services (IES).

Release date for notification: February 8
Exam: From May 12
Combined Geo-Scientist And Geologist Exam:

It is conducted for recruiting candidates to the posts of two categories viz. category I (posts in Geological Survey of India) category II (posts in Central Ground Water Board).

Release date for notification: February 8
Exam: From May 12
Engineering Services (Main) Examination:

Exam: From May 14
Civil Services (Preliminary) Exam:

Release date for notification: February 22
Exam: June 18
Indian forest service (Prelims) Exam. 2017 through CS(P) Exam:

Release date for notification: February 22
Exam: June 18
Central Armed Police Forces (ACs) Examination:

Release date for notification: April 12
Exam: July 23
Combined Medical Services Exam:

Release date for notification: April 26
Exam: August 13
N.D.A. & N.A. Exam.(II):

Release date for notification: June 7
Exam: September 10
Civil Services (Main) Exam:

Exam: October 28

C.D.S. Exam.(II):

Release date for notification: August 9
Exam: November 19
Indian Forest Service (Main) Exam:

Exam: From December 3

Read: UPSC NDA Final Results 2015: Announced at upsc.gov.in

Read: Architecture Aptitude Test (AAT) 2016: Registrations to begin from tomorro

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Herman Cain

Aerospace Engineering Degree

aerospace engineeringAn Aerospace Engineering Degree involves the study of air and space travel. This might include military aircraft design and development, along with commercial airline design and satellite technology. The terms Aerospace and Aeronautical are both often used interchangeably, yet there are key differences between the two. Aeronautical Engineering relates to craft that remain in our atmosphere, while Aerospace Engineering refers to aircraft that venture outside our atmosphere. Most programs in the United States have changed their names from Aeronautical to Aerospace over the past couple decades, but there are still some programs that go by the historical name.

Class XII marks will not be a factor for determining rankings in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admissions to engineering undergraduate courses from next year.

HRD ministry officials on Thursday said the decision was taken by the ministry after a committee set up by IIT council submitted recommendations on changes in the JEE pattern, which were put in the public domain for wide consultations.

"After examining the Ashok Mishra committee's report and public feedback, MHRD has decided on a few changes in the JEE pattern for 2017. The present system of allotting 40 per cent weightage to Class XII marks for determining ranks in JEE shall be dispensed with," an official said.

"Class XII scores will be a crucial parameter only for determining the eligibility criteria for the exam," the official added.

To qualify for appearing in exam, students need to have at least 75 per cent marks or be in top 20 percentile in Class XII examination. SC, ST students should have 65 per cent marks. "All other JEE examination systems shall remain unchanged," the official said.

The committee had in November recommended major changes in the JEE structure, including setting up of a National Testing Service to conduct tests for shortlisting about four lakh students for the exam.

The committee of eminent persons had submitted its report on November 5. Its recommendations were aimed at weaning IIT aspirants away from the dependence on coaching institutes.

The ministry had put the committee's recommendations in the public domain for wide consultations and decided that the JEE 2016 be conducted in the manner it was held in 2015, with an enhanced intake from 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh in the JEE (Advanced) stage.

In 2015 UPSC Prelims Exam, 35 questions were asked from Economy, Environment, Governance and Current Affairs. Keeping this fact in mind, Current Affairs Survey's July 2016 Issue's Prelims Special Section has dealt with Sectoral Analysis. This section has covered news related to bills & acts, policies, schemes, reports, committees & taskforces from the period 2014 to 2016.
The section has been divided into these following chapters:
1. Macro-Economic Development & Policy
2. Poverty & Inequality
3. RBI, Monetary Policy & Banking
4. Rural Development & Panchayati Raj
5. Subsidy & DBT
6. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan
7. Power & Energy Security
8. Infrastructure & Transport
9. Financial Inclusion
10. Agriculture & Livestock
11. Labour Reforms
12. Urban Development
13. Universal Health
14. Women & Children
15. WTO, Foreign Trade & FDI
16. Inclusive & Social Development
17. Education & Human Resources
18. Ecology & Environment
Another reason why you must by this issue is the mains special Analysis section, which provides in-depth analysis of the following topics:
1.) Water Conservation Projects in States
2.) Doubling Farmers’ Income by 2022
3.) Can India be Transformed without Devolution of Powers?
4.) Relative Merits and Demerits of GDP, and its Alternatives
5.) Managing Garbage Problem: Solutions and Case Studies
6.) Curbing Money Power in Elections
7.) Flashpoints in the Himalayas and Concerns for India
8.) Should Domicile Requirements of Rajya Sabha be Made Mandatory Again?
9.) Does Right to Information Act Hamper Governance?
10.) India’s Declining Fertility
11.) Radiation Sterilisation
12.) ‘Hypersonic Superjet’ Nears Reality
13.) What is Social Boycott? Can the Law Stop Social Evil?
14.) ‘Ken-Betwa Project’ is Dangers to Ecology
15.) Centre Dilutes ‘Wetland Protection Rules’
16.) Global Urban Air Pollution Increase
17.) ‘World Heritage Sites’ Under Threat
18.) Uttarakhand Forest Fires
19.) Draft Guidelines for GM Seeds
20.) What are the New Issues in Trade Negotiations?
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