The broken windows at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin were replaced with red protective materials on August 16. [Photo by Zheng Huansong/Xinhua]

Workers install protective materials at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin on August 16. [Photo by Zheng Huansong/Xinhua]

The Tianhe-1 Supercomputer was resumed at around 10:00pm on August 15. After adjustment and repair, each system was launched gradually and the cloud computing platform also resumed.

The blast on the evening of August 12 at the hazardous warehouse of the Rui Hai Logistics in the Tianjin Port had great influence to the buildings around. The National Supercomputer Center located only 1.5 kilometers away from the affected area was influenced. The country's first a quadrillion computing level supercomputer “Tianhe-1” is located in the center.

On August 17th, shattered glass and broken window frames still lay on the ground around the supercomputer center on the morning of August 17. The building was surrounded by warning lines. Entering the building, the first and the second floor are occupied by the main machine room of the supercomputer. Although the gate of the machine room was out of shape and part of the ceiling had fallen down, the supercomputer was completely undamaged. It was because that the machine room was specially enhanced during the design and construction.

Right after the second blast, Liu Guangming, director of the supercomputer center rushed into the main machine room in the first floor directly from his office.

“Seeing the signal light of the supercomputer glittering and the machine operating in normal, I felt relieved,” said Liu.

After inspection, the supercomputer was not damaged. But for safety reasons, all the systems of the supercomputer were manually shut off half an hour after the blast.

Problems were only found on two disks of the supercomputer after the blast. The entire system was strong and stable, and the damaged data will be recovered to the new discs. Loss of data will not happen, nor will the users be affected, according to Liu.

The Tianhe-1 Supercomputer was resumed at around 10:00pm on August 15. After adjustment and repair, each system was launched gradually. The electronic administrative cloud computing platform based on the supercomputer was also resumed.

As of 11:00am on August 16, 33 platforms and business systems considering administration, finance, and industry and commerce in Tianjin’s Binhai New Area had resumed as usual.

The trouble shooting and adjustment of the supercomputer had been completed by 12:20pm, and the entire system resumed.

The systems for government users such as the meteorological department and commercial users resumed in the afternoon of August 16. The supercomputer is completely recovered from the blast.