China has a remarkably powerful place in world rankings on supercomputes. The country has also passed the US, possessing 203 of the 500 most powerful supercomputers. This is a first time in history for China!
Top 500
Just six months ago, the US was ahead with 169 supercomputers in the Top 500, but China is steadily increasing its investment in research and technology and is catching up. As of this list release, ranked every six months, China’s Sunway TaihuLight has the most processing power with 93 petaflops/sec, still a long way from the top.
China dominates in the rankings. The Chinese Tianhe-2 (33.9 petaflop/sec) is the most powerful, followed by Switzerland’s Piz Daint (19.6 petaflop/sec) and Japan’s Gyoukou (19.1 petaflop/sec). The American Titan (17.6 petaf
On the Top 500 list, Japan follows behind China and the US, having 35 supercomputers. In the EU rankings, Germany occupies number two with 20 computers while France and UK have 18 two each.
The total power of the 500 most powerful systems has now reached 845 petaflops, compared to 749 petaflops six months ago and 672 petaflops a year ago. It is worth noting that China plays a big role with 35% of the total power. The threshold to include a supercomputer in the Top 500 has now risen to 548 teraflops from 432 teraflops in June.
As for the “tallest” computer, it is one of three or four machines installed in a facility on the International Space Station. It’s listed as being from Japan and can be found on an official supplementary list called Top Green 500.
Supercomputers can be used in a variety of ways; they can be used to study and predict the weather & climate, as well as simulate nuclear and other weapons, oil research, DNA analysis, etc.
Another article about supercomputers here.
Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
