" the newer HPCG benchmark, which was put together by Jack Dongarra and colleagues to collect better data movement metrics that better reflect the needs of real world applications, shows this new system lagging far behind its companions in the top ten of the Top 500 supercomputer list.
In the results below, take a look at the percent of peak performance on HPCG. Other machines are getting around 2 percent, but this system gets only 0.3 percent–a very low rating that shows moving data through the hierarchy is very expensive and will limit performance."
http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/06/20/look-inside-chinas-chart-topping-new-supercomputer/
From same article:
In the results below, take a look at the percent of peak performance on HPCG. Other machines are getting around 2 percent, but this system gets only 0.3 percent–a very low rating that shows moving data through the hierarchy is very expensive and will limit performance.
Oh, but those Gordon Bell prize submissions.
“The fact that they have three finalists for the Gordon Bell award is a big deal. It’s a high point for any system or application,” Dongarra tells The Next Platform. “Most applications that run at that level run close to ‘at scale’ using almost all the processors. And
this is capable of running nearly at scale.
It is not just a stunt machine and these results are impressive and should be taken seriously.”
In short, while there were many in the supercomputing set who claimed the Chinese “Tianhe-1” and its follow-on Tianhe-2 machines were “stunt” systems to some degree (designed to do a few things well application wise, but also to exploit sheer floating point potential), that same thing cannot be said of the new system.