Progress and Challenges in High Performance Computer Technology

High performance computers provide strategic computing power in the construction of national economy and defense, and become one of symbols of the country’s overall strength. Over 30 years, with the supports of governments, the technology of high performance computers is in the process of rapid development, during which the computing performance increases nearly 3 million times and the processors number expands over 10 hundred thousands times. To solve the critical issues related with parallel efficiency and scalability, scientific researchers pursued extensive theoretical studies and technical innovations. The paper briefly looks back the course of building high performance computer systems both at home and abroad, and summarizes the significant breakthroughs of international high performance computer technology. We also overview the technology progress of China in the area of parallel computer architecture, parallel operating system and resource management, parallel compiler and performance optimization, environment for parallel programming and network computing. Finally, we examine the challenging issues, “memory wall”, system scalability and “power wall”, and discuss the issues of high productivity computers, which is the trend in building next generation high performance computers.