Sugon

Chinese supercomputer manufacturer

For other uses, see Dawning.

Dawning Information Industry Company Limited ("Sugon")

Native name

| 曙光信息產業有限公司
Company type| Public

Traded as

* SSE: 603019

Industry| High performance computing
Founded| 1996; 29 years ago (1996)
Headquarters| Sugon Building, Zhongguancun Software Park, Haidian District,

Beijing

People's Republic of China

Area served

| China
Products| Supercomputers, x86 servers
Website| www.sugon.com

Sugon (Chinese: 曙光; pinyin: Shǔguāng), officially Dawning Information Industry Company Limited,[1] is a supercomputer manufacturer based in the People's Republic of China.[2] The company is a spin-off from research done at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and still has close links to it.[3]

## History

[edit]

The company is a development of work done at the Institute of Computer Science, CAS.[1][citation needed] Under the Chinese government's 863 Program, for the research and development of high technology products, the group launched their first supercomputer (Dawning No. 1) in 1993.[2] In 1996 the group launched the Dawning Company to allow the transfer of research computers into the market.[2]

The company was tasked with developing further supercomputers under the 863 program, which led to the Dawning 5000A and 6000 computers.[2]

The company was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2014.[1] CAS still retains stock in the company.[citation needed]

In May 2025, it was announced that Sugon would merge with Hygon Information Technology.[4]

### U.S. sanctions

[edit]

Further information: United States sanctions against China and Military-civil fusion

According to the United States Department of Defense the company has links to the People's Liberation Army and, in 2019, Sugon was added to the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List due to U.S. national security concerns.[5][6][7] In November 2020, the then President of the United States Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting any American company or individual from owning shares in companies that the United States Department of Defense has listed as having links to the People's Liberation Army, which included Sugon.[8][9][10]

In October 2022, the United States Department of Defense added Sugon to a list of "Chinese military companies" operating in the U.S.[11]

## Supercomputers

[edit]

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (December 2021)

|

Dawning was the company's initial name; it was later changed to Sugon. The computers are originally known by their Dawning moniker, but can also use Sugon names in the literature. The model series is as below.

### Dawning No.1

[edit]

The first supercomputer created was Dawning No.1 (Shuguang Yihao, 曙光一号), which received state certification in October 1993. This supercomputer achieved 640 million FLOPS,[2] and utilizes Motorola 88100 CPUs (4 total) and 88200 CPUs (8 total), and over 20 were built. The operating system is UNIX V.[citation needed]

### Dawning 1000

[edit]

The Dawning 1000 was Sugon's second generation supercomputer, and was originally named Dawning No.2 (Shuguang Erhao, 曙光二号).[citation needed] Dawning 1000 was released in 1995,[citation needed] and received state certification on 11 May 1995.[citation needed] The family of supercomputers could achieve 2.5 GFLOPS.[2] This series of the Dawning family consists of the Dawning 1000A and 1000L.[citation needed]

### Dawning 2000

[edit]

The Dawning 2000 was initially released in 1996, and could achieve a peak performance of 4 GFLOPS.[citation needed] A further variant, the Dawning 2000-I, was released in 1998 with a peak performance of 20 GFLOPS. The final model in the series, the Dawning 2000-II, was released in 1999 with a peak performance of 111.7 GFLOPS.[citation needed]

The Dawning 2000 passed state certification on 28 January 2000.[citation needed] The supercomputer model was designed as a cluster to achieve over 100 GLOPS peak performance.[2] The number of CPUs used was greatly increased to 164 in comparison to older models, and like earlier models, the operating system is UNIX.[citation needed]

### Dawning 3000

[edit]

The Dawning 3000 passed state certification on 9 March 2001. Like the Dawning 2000, the system was designed as a cluster, and could achieve 400 GFLOPS peak performance.[2] The number of CPU increased to 280, and the system consists of ten 2-meter tall racks, weighing 5 tons total. Power consumption is 25 kW, and one of the tasks it was used for was the part of human genome mapping that China was responsible for.[citation needed]

### Dawning 4000A

[edit]

The fifth member of the Dawning family, Dawning 4000A, debuted as one of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world on the TOP500 list,[12] capable of 806.1 billion FLOPS. The system, at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center, utilizes over 2,560 AMD Opteron processors, and can reach speeds of 8 teraflops.

### Dawning 5000

[edit]

The Dawning 5000 series was initially planned to use indigenous Loongson processors.[13][14] However Shanghai Supercomputer Center required Microsoft Windows support whereas Loongson only ran under Linux.[13]

The resulting Dawning 5000A uses 7,680 1.9 GHz AMD Opteron Quad-core processors, resulting in 30,720 cores, with an Infiniband interconnecting network. The computer occupies an area of 75 square meters and the power consumption is 700 kW. The supercomputer is capable of 180 teraflops and received state certification in June 2008.[citation needed]

The Dawning 5000A was ranked 10th in the November 2008 TOP500 list.[15] Additionally at the time, it was also the largest system using Windows HPC Server 2008 for this benchmark. This system is also installed at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center and runs with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.[16]

### Dawning 6000

[edit]

The Dawning 6000 was announced in 2011, at 300 TFLOPS, incorporating 3000 8-core Loongson 3B processors at 3.2 GFLOP/W. It is the "first supercomputer made exclusively of Chinese components"[17] and has a projected speed of over a PFLOP (one quadrillion operations per second). For comparison, the fastest supercomputer as of June 2014 runs at 33 PFLOPS.[18] The same announcement said that a petascale supercomputer was under development and that the launch was anticipated in 2012 or 2013.[17]

## See also

[edit]

* Shanghai Supercomputer Center
* Nebulae - Dawning TC3600

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c "Company Overview - Sugon". www.sugon.com. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Qian, Depei; Luan, Zhongzhi (1 January 2019). "High Performance Computing Development in China: A Brief Review and Perspectives". Computing in Science & Engineering. 21 (1): 6–16\. Bibcode:2019CSE....21a...6Q. doi:10.1109/MCSE.2018.2875367. S2CID 70098370. Archived from the original on 16 April 2024. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
3. ^ "中国科学院大学与中科曙光签署合作协议" [The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences signed a cooperation agreement with Sugon]. news.ucas.ac.cn (in Chinese). 8 May 2021. Archived from the original on 16 April 2024. Retrieved 16 April 2024. "曙光与国科大同属于中科院体系，双方均致力于国家科技自强，发展理念高度契合，合作空间广阔，未来大有可为"
4. ^ Cao, Ann (26 May 2025). "Sugon, Hygon merger is latest sign of consolidation in China's computing sector". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 26 May 2025.
5. ^ Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (24 June 2020). "Defense Department produces list of Chinese military-linked companies". Axios. Archived from the original on 25 June 2020. Retrieved 24 June 2020.
6. ^ Swanson, Ana; Mozur, Paul; Lohr, Steve (21 June 2019). "U.S. Blacklists More Chinese Tech Companies Over National Security Concerns". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
7. ^ O’Keeffe, Kate; Fitch, Asa (21 June 2019). "U.S. Targets China's Supercomputing Push With New Export Restrictions". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on 9 June 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
8. ^ Chen, Shawna (12 November 2020). "Trump bans Americans from investing in 31 companies with links to Chinese military". Axios. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
9. ^ Pamuk, Humeyra; Alper, Alexandra; Ali, Idrees (12 November 2020). "Trump bans U.S. investments in firms linked to Chinese military". Reuters. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
10. ^ Swanson, Ana (12 November 2020). "Trump Bars Investment in Chinese Firms With Military Ties". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
11. ^ "DOD Releases List of People's Republic of China (PRC) Military Companies in Accordance With Section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021". U.S. Department of Defense. 5 October 2022. Archived from the original on 5 October 2022. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
12. ^ "TOP500 List - June 2004 (1-100) | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites". Archived from the original on 18 March 2016. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
13. ^ a b "China Ditches Home-Grown Chips in New Supercomputer". 25 June 2008. Archived from the original on 30 June 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
14. ^ http://news.sina.com.tw/tech/sinacn/cn/2007-04-04/190438142075.shtml [dead link]
15. ^ "November 2008 TOP500 list". Archived from the original on 6 September 2018. Retrieved 18 November 2008.
16. ^ "Shanghai Supercomputer Center Computing Resources". Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 12 March 2011.
17. ^ a b Mims, Christopher (2 March 2011). "China's Homemade Supercomputer May be the Most Efficient Ever". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 9 November 2018. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
18. ^ "CHINA'S TIANHE-2 SUPERCOMPUTER RETAINS TOP SPOT ON 43RD EDITION OF THE TOP500 LIST". Archived from the original on 24 May 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2014.

## External links

[edit]

* Official website