US plays cards poorly with China: Nobel laureate

By Li Xing (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-11-14 07:41

This October 9, 2006 file photo shows Edmund Phelps at Columbia University. [columbia.edu]

 TANGIER, Morocco -- "The United States did not play its cards very well with China," American economist and Nobel Prize laureate Edmund Phelps said on Saturday in New York, during a live video conference with participants of the 2010 MEDays in Morocco's northern coastal city of Tangier. 

Phelps made the remark while responding to a question whether the US was somewhat isolated during the G20 summit in Seoul.

China has been showing serious efforts in reducing its dependence on exports, said the economist. "China is moving in the right direction."

China needs time to adjust its economy and cut down its reliance on exports, Phelps said. But both the US and Europe try to beat up China, placing China in a tight space, he said.

The real problem is the conflicts between Europe and the US as they fight to export more. And Obama came up with "unpopular solutions", Phelps said.

Phelps is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics.

Newscribe : get free news in real time

Global Biz G20 refuses to back US push on China's currency: positive results

 G20 refuses to back US push on China's currency

(Agencies/Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-11-12 18:54

SEOUL, South Korea - Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to endorse a US push to get China to let its currency rise, keeping alive a dispute that has raised the specter of a global trade war.

At the end of their two-day summit, the leaders of the Group of 20 rich and developing economies -- including US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao -- issued a statement that only said they agreed to refrain from "competitive devaluation" of currencies.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (R) meets US President Barack Obama as part of the G20 Summit in Seoul, Nov 11, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]

Such a statement is of little consequence since countries usually only devalue their currencies in extreme situations like a severe financial crisis. Using a slightly different wording favored by the US -- "competitive undervaluation" -- would have shown the G20 taking a stronger stance on China's currency policy.

Special coverage: G20 Summit in Seoul Related readings: President Hu leaves for Japan after G20 summit G20 Summit promotes innovative finance models for SMEs  US panelists pessimistic about G20 fruit G20 leaders convene in Seoul as summit kicks off

The crux of the dispute is Washington's allegations that Beijing is artificially keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage. But the US position has been undermined by its own recent policy of printing money to boost a sluggish economy, which is weakening the dollar. 

Many countries are irate over the Federal Reserve's plans to pump $600 billion into the sluggish American economy. They see that move as a reckless and selfish scheme to flood markets with dollars, driving down the value of the US currency and giving American exporters an advantage.

Some critics warn that US interest rates kept too low for too long could inflate new bubbles in the prices of commodities, stocks and other assets. Developing countries like Thailand and Indonesia fear that falling yields on US government bonds will send money flooding their way in search of higher returns. Such emerging markets could be left vulnerable to a crash if investors later decide to pull out and move their money elsewhere.

Still, the leaders vowed to fight protectionism.

"Recognizing the importance of free trade and investment for global recovery, we are committed to keeping markets open and liberalizing trade and investment," the joint statement said.

The G20 leaders also said they will pursue policies to reduce the gaps between nations running large trade surpluses and those running deficits.

The G20 Seoul Summit has confirmed the 6-percent shift of quota shares to emerging economies in the International Monetary Fund, according to the joint communique.

"Today, we welcomed the ambitious achievements by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors at the Gyeongju Meeting and subsequent decision by the IMF, on a comprehensive package of IMF quota and governance reforms," said the communique.

The reform are an important step toward a more legitimate, credible and effective IMF, by ensuring that quotas and Executive Board composition are more reflective of new global economic realities, it said.

The IMF reform, it said, would continue the dynamic process aimed at enhancing the voice and representing of emerging market and developing countries, including the poorest, through a review of the quota formula by January 2013.

And the next general review of quotas would be completed by January 2014, it said.

China sees positive results at G20 Seoul summit

SEOUL - The Group of 20 (G20) summit that ended Friday has achieved positive results with concerted efforts from all participating nations, Chinese delegation spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

Special Coverage: G20 Summit in Seoul Related readings: G20 refuses to back US push on China's currency  G20 summit agrees on trade, currencies  Hu presents 4-point proposal at G20 summit  G20 leaders convene in Seoul as summit kicks off

Ma said that the world economy is gradually recovering, but uncertainties still remain, and that the Seoul summit witnessed the framework of G20 shifting its focus from emergency response to long-term economic governance. 

Firstly, all member countries vowed to strengthen the role of the G20, and properly deal with the new risks and new challenges in the international financial sector so as to jointly boost the positive, sustainable and balanced growth of the global economy, Ma said.

Secondly, G20 leaders agreed to further promote reform of international financial institutions, and confirmed the 6-percent shift of quota shares to emerging economies in the International Monetary Fund, he said.

Thirdly, G20 leaders for the first time listed the issue of development as a major topic, and the summit endorsed the Multi-year Action Plan on Development over the medium term, Ma said.

And fourthly, based on the achievements made in previous summits, G20 leaders pledged continuous efforts to intensify financial regulation and combat trade-protectionism, and put forward a series of new measures and steps which will be conducive to the long-term healthy and steady development of the world economy, he said.

Newscribe : get free news in real time 

Jaguar's supercomputing reign coming to an end?

A timeline of supercomputing speed.

(Credit: AMD)

 

The Jaguar supercomputer, housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, has been the fastest supercomputer on the planet for almost a year. But is it about to lose that title and place atop the podium?

Every six months, the Top500 project releases the rankings of the most powerful supercomputers. The current pace of technology development means the list does tend to reorder every half a year or so. But Jaguar has been poised at the top of the food chain for almost a year. Though the Top500 list doesn't get released until next week, it's been widely assumed that Jaguar will be taken down by a supercomputer built by China's National University of Defense Technology, located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin.

Jaguar narrowly avoided being overtaken in June, the last time the rankings were released. The Nebulae supercomputer, located at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, came in second, achieving 1.271 petaflops/s (1.271 quadrillion floating point operations per second) running something called the Linpack benchmark.

But it appears that Jaguar's lead has been overcome this time. There have been reports about it over the last few weeks, and President Barack Obama even mentioned it during a speech last week:

"And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth--that used to be us. They're making investments because they know those investments will pay off over the long term," he said.

The supercomputers are ranked on many factors, but the the Top500 list is ordered based on the results of the Linpack benchmark. Even if it places the Tianjin supercomputer above Jaguar, it doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. is getting bumped from its perch atop supercomputing, argue two scientists who work at Oak Ridge.

"What you find historically with these supercomputers is they become the normal machines 5 or 10 years later that everybody uses."

--Jeremy Smith, Center for Molecular Biophysics

"China might have the largest number of cores in one computer, so theoretically they have the most powerful computer. But they maybe don't have the most powerful scientific codes yet that use that computer," said Jeremy Smith, director of the Center for Molecular Biophysics at the University of Tennessee, in an interview. "So from that perspective, they may not be at the same level as Oak Ridge."

Jaguar is comprised of more than 250,000 AMD Opteron cores, running extremely sophisticated computer programs that try to answer complex questions like why ribosomes (components of cells that create amino acids) are dependent on magnesium, how to simulate making more environmentally-friendly ethanol out of plant material, and how to predict climate change. Jaguar's specialty is getting all those cores running together extremely efficiently, which is a separate and perhaps harder task than just building a really powerful computer.

Smith says that the projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory run extremely efficiently on Jaguar, and the scientific value of the computing is therefore very high.

While China's supercomputer is based on GPUs (graphics processing unit) (in this case, built by Nvidia), and it's faster technically because the CPU (central processing unit) uses the GPU to accelerate its speed. But if you don't get the software to run on it properly, it's actually harder to use, Roland Schultz, graduate student at the University of Tennessee's Center for Molecular Biophysics, said.

What Schultz says he is much more interested in is the Gordon Bell Prize, which is awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery to the most innovative scientific application of supercomputing. Teams from Oak Ridge have won most recently in 2008 and 2009 for research into high-temperature superconductivity, or sending electricity over long distances in high temperatures with no loss of transmission.

But do we make too much of who's faster? Smith put it in perspective.

"What you find historically with these supercomputers is they become the normal machines 5 or 10 years later that everybody uses," said Smith. "The Jaguar machines that we're so amazed at right now, it could be every university or company has one" eventually.

We'll know exactly how things have shaken out next week when the Top500 List is released. But even if Jaguar does get hunted down by a Chinese supercomputer, it's not as if the folks at Oak Ridge are sitting still. The Department of Energy, which owns Oak Ridge's supercomputer, is already looking at moving from the current peta-scale computing (a quadrillion floating point operations per second) to exa-scale computing (a quintillion floating point operations per second), a speed one thousand times faster than Jaguar is currently capable of processing at.

"To get there in the next 5 to 10 years, to get to 10 million cores in one room, is a major technical challenge," noted Smith. "It's going to be fundamentally different than before. It's a hardware problem, and getting the software working is a major challenge indeed."

Erica Ogg

Full Profile E-mail Erica Ogg

Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica.

Recent posts from Circuit Breaker

Jaguar's supercomputing reign coming to an end?

iOS 4.2, where iPhone meets iPad

IT admins mourn Xserve's death

Will the IT guy learn to love Apple?

Oakley focuses on 3D future

Report: Hurd told contractor about EDS buy

Apple retires Xserve in favor of Mac Pro Server

Apple adds calendars back to iPhoto

Related

Is China a supercomputer threat? (Q&A)

NCSA director: GPU is future of supercomputing

Nvidia helps China to supercomputer crown

NASA images capture icy nucleus of distant comet

Researchers attack transistors to slay vampire power

SGI's old-school supercomputer now revved up

Top-10 tech tricks we're sick of seeing in movies

Lightbulb wars: More than just LED

Add a Comment (Log in or register) (4 Comments)

by Otto Holland November 11, 2010 5:50 PM PST

The article mentioned 250,000 cores of AMD Opteron. I am curious to know if those processors are the 4 cores or the new Barcelona 12 cores on 32 NANO. If they are the older 4 or 6 cores, they can be swaped out for the new 12 cores, because they use the same ZIFF socket. Just wondering....

Like this Reply to this comment

by rip_saw November 11, 2010 6:19 PM PST

Durr, who has the most cores and flops is meaningless now. Last I checked, Folding@home trumps the crap out of anything in China, and google's servers totally destroy any supercomputer, although they are not being used for that purpose. I understand the use of a single computer, but for many projects, it's just not needed.

Like this Reply to this comment

by dralw65 November 11, 2010 6:42 PM PST

This a good article that is very informative, however, the statement about ribsomes appears incorrect: ribosomes synthesize proteins from amino acids. Amino acids are not made by ribosomes.

Like this Reply to this comment

by realityenigma November 11, 2010 7:46 PM PST

When I first read this (on slashdot.org) I was concerned myself. However, I was directed to an interesting link about a supercomputer (US built) that will be ready in 2012: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/ibms-sequoia-supercomputer-to-shatter-speed-records/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia I am sure you guys can find more articles if you are interested;nevertheless, I think we can rest easy if we are worried about speed records.

Like this Reply to this comment

Newscribe : get free news in real time