APPROVED FOR RELEASE DATE OCT 2003 3 a - et 1 51 9 5 @244 at SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT Of ce of Scientific and Weapons Research 3 Aagust1994 CHINA The Galaxy-II Computer and Nuclear-Related Research MICROFILMEL uclear-weapons-related work took place on a alaxy-II computer a the Beijing National Meteorological Center I Of the possible explanations trus activity the most plausible involves software testing by Chinese nuclear weapons researchers in preparation for the receipt of their own Galaxy-II The indigenously developed Galaxy-II is an adequate high- performance computer for meteorology and nuclear weapons modeling as but falls far short of current US and Jo anese supercomputer performance leVelS I 199 Reported uclear-Related Activities at MC Nil 1L galaxy-ll 15 the second to be built the Ualaxy Il is at the military af liated institute in Changsha where it was produced and the third machine is to be delivered to in November 1994 MC weather-forecasting work occupied the Galavv- rm least four to six hours per day A range of scenarios could explain the reported nuclear related computational activities at the NMC The scientists from IAPCM could have been running test programs and or portions of their noclear modeling hydrocodes on the NMC Galaxy-II to gain experience with the computer before their institute receives its own machine This is the most likely scenario it is precisely what US weapon designers often do to learn in advance how to optimize use of a new computer system before they take delivery and can run full nuclear simulations in their own secure facilities Seera The IAPCM researchers could have used the Galaxy-l at NMC for actual nuclear design work This is less likely but possible The NMC Galaxy is located in a relatively open institute and is part of a network with many other computers Chinese nuclear modeling on the machine at NMC would run some risk of detection by nonnuclear researchers including foreign personnel Nevertheless even part-time computational access to the Galaxy at NMC could help IAPCM designers accelerate progress on their projects and they might judge the risks of detection to be acceptable If the most probable scenario is correct and the Chinese nuclear modelers were running test programs or code fragments primarily to gain experience with the Galaxy-II then their use of NM computers would probably end when IAPCM receives its own Galaxy in late 1994 On the other hand I WMC facilities have clearly been used to support Chinese nuclear weapons research Ifa Cray computer at NMC were diverted to such uses it would be of significantly greater utility than the Galaxy-II to the Chinese in their nuclear computations Safeguards could detect but not prevent such a diversion in Place Technical Analysis The Chinese Galaxy-II NMC researchers have been using an indigenously developed Chinese high performance computer the Galaxy-II since October 1993 according to Open Chinese publications and The Galaxy-II is on an NMC network where it is front-ended by a Ub-Ongm rrucrocomputer and can share data with other US and Chinese systems DevelopmenLof the Galaxy-l computer began in 1986 at the National Defense University of Science and Technology in Changsha In 1988 the NMC contracted to acquire the rst production-mode Galaxy-II for use in its medium-range weather forecasting work The development of the Galaxy-II has been relatively slow as compared with progress in the Western high-performance computing industry during the past decade The Galaxy II is according to published specifications a four-processor computer with a clock rate of 20 nanoseconds equivalent to 50 even than a 1978 vintage Cray-l 12 5 ns and far behind current hi gh end Japanese and Cray systems which are in the 4 ns area According to the Chinese press the Galaxy-ll has a total shared main memory size of 256 megabytes better than a Cray-l but much less than current Western supercomputers The Chinese state that the Galaxy-ll has two independent 10-megabit-per-second input output 2 _S er et_ ll - which if true is very slow and likely to be a signi cant limitation for users who need to move large data sets through the system Overall the Chinese have claimed that the Galaxy-ll can perform 400 million 64-bit floating-point operations per second MFLOPS that each processor of a Galaxy-II can achieve 400 MFLOPS given its slow clock rate small main memory size and limited bandwidth the four-processor Galaxy-II as a whole probably can achieve only a composite theoretical performance CTP of 400 to 5 00 million theoretical operations per second M TOPS The Galaxy-H's performance thus falls far short of current- generation Western supercomputers it is comparable to that of today 's high-end scientific engineering workstations now available in the West for under $100 000 CI The Galaxy-II is an adequate computer for medium-range numerical weather forecasting but Chinese meteorologists almost certainly would prefer to have faster reliable easier-to-use Cray systems Most computational weather centers around the world use Cray systems so compatible hardware would enable the Chinese to share software and algorithms much more easily with their colleagues A Japanese supercomputer would be a second choice for meteorological applications but significantly behind a Cray in utility and requiring additional investment of time and software development resources The Chinese have stated openly lhat they plan to build a successor machine the Galaxy- ll This future computer is to be a massively parallel syStem with 128 processors initially and will ultimately use up to a thousand processors It will probably rely heavily on Western components The scheduled date for completion of the first is 1998 and the ultimate design performance is claimed to be many billions of floating-point operations per second The slow production schedule of the assures that even if it is finished on time it will be eclipsed by Western advanced workstations and will not be competitive with future US or Japanese supercomputers                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu