[SIGCIS-Members] High Performance Computing in China

[Jon Lindsay]

Dear Colleagues,

I'm part of a project at UCSD, now in its very early stages and funded
through Lawrence Livermore NL, to assess Chinese progress and prospects in
High Performance Computing. As you probably know, China has recently
exploded onto the HPC scene with 13% of the Top500 systems and growing,
including a brief showing at the top with the Tianhe-1A. An article in the
most recent Science even suggests that China may be the first to hit the
exascale mark. (Incidentally, if this happens and if it happens on Moore's
timeline, it will raise some very interesting questions about just how the
heck Moore's Law is working across international boundaries and quite
different cultural approaches to S&T).

We are very much interested in the institutional context & drivers of
Chinese HPC growth, and in comparing this with the history of
supercomputing elsewhere (US, Europe, Japan). I would be very interested in
any work you might recommend on this history. On the US experience I am
aware of MacKenzie's excellent 1991 and 1994 articles, books on Pentagon
support by Norberg & ONeill 1996 and Akera 2008, NRC volumes on HPC from
1999 and 2004, and Edwards 2010 is certainly relevant too. I also see that
there's a volume on the history of the Top500 by Meuer et al coming out
later this summer which appears to emphasize mainly technical milestones.
What other key texts on the evolution of supercomputing am I missing,
especially beyond the American case?

Thanks very much for any and all suggestions!

Best,
Jon
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