Chinese supercomputer tops list of world's fastest
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E-mail China.org.cn, June 21, 2016
A Chinese supercomputer has topped a list of the world's fastest computers for the seventh straight year — and for the first time the winner uses Chinese-designed processors instead of US technology.
![Photo taken on June 16, 2016 shows Sunway TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. Performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, Sunway TaihuLight dethroned China's Tianhe-2 from the top in a list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.[Photo/Xinhua]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20160621/7427ea210acc18d2d4d001.jpg "Photo taken on June 16, 2016 shows Sunway TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. Performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, Sunway TaihuLight dethroned China's Tianhe-2 from the top in a list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.[Photo/Xinhua]") |
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Photo taken on June 16, 2016 shows Sunway TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province. Performing 93 quadrillion calculations per second, Sunway TaihuLight dethroned China's Tianhe-2 from the top in a list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.[Photo/Xinhua] |
The newcomer, Sunway TaihuLight, is twice as fast and three times as efficient as Tianhe-2, an intel-based supercomputer, which had claimed the top spot on the past six TOP 500 lists.
The new system was developed by the Chinese National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
The computing power of the supercomputer is provided by a China-developed many-core CPU chip, which is just 25 square cm.
"It would take 7.2 billion people using electronic calculators 32 years, or 2 million desktop computers working together for one minute, to do the same calculation the computer can solve in just 60 seconds," said Yang Guangwen, head of the Wuxi center.
Installed inside the center's 1,000-square-meter computer room, Sunway-TaihuLight is composed of 40,960 processors.
A statement from the half-yearly list compiled by experts from the United States and Europe said, "China maintained its No 1 ranking on the 47th edition of the TOP 500 list of the world's top supercomputers, but with a new system built entirely using processors designed and made in China."
It is also the first time since the list was initially drawn up in 1993 that the US is no longer home to the largest number of supercomputer systems.
"With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the past few years, China leads with 167 systems and the US is second with 165," the statement said.
China also leads the performance category, it said.
Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and editor of the list, told Xinhua News Agency: "It's a trend with China. They had no systems in 2001, and today they surpass the United States. No other nation has seen such rapid growth."
Dongarra said supercomputers are more important than ever, as they provide the capability to match a broad range of industries, including energy, pharmaceuticals, aircraft, automobile and entertainment.
"More powerful computing capability will allow these diverse industries to engineer superior new products more quickly, which could improve a nation's competitiveness," he said.
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