China’s Sunway TaihuLight named world’s fastest supercomputer

World Today

Sunway TaihuLightThe Sunway TaihuLight, a new Chinese supercomputer, is seen in Wuxi, eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. (Li Xiang/Xinhua via AP)

Once again, China’s Sunway TaihuLight has been declared the world’s fastest supercomputer, according to the latest edition of the semiannual Top 500 Supercomputer list released on Monday.

This is the third year and eighth time in a row that a Chinese-made computer has taken the semi-annual TOP500 crown.

Based in the National Supercomputing Center in the city of Wuxi in east China’s Jiangsu Province, Sunway TaihuLight is capable of performing 93 million-billion calculations per second (petaflop/s), which is almost three times as fast as the second-ranked Tianhe-2.

Sunway TaihuLight won the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer in June this year when it made its first public appearance. With the six consecutive wins by Tianhe-2 in the past three years, Chinese supercomputers have dominated the list for four consecutive years. It is also the first time a Chinese supercomputer has won without any U.S. processors or technology.

Also in June, China overtook the U.S. in the total number of supercomputers. This was the first time the U.S. was not at the top of that list since it began 23 years ago.

Both countries are closely ranked in the performance category, with the US hitting 33.9 of overall performance and China holding with 33.3.

As far as companies producing supercomputers go, U.S. based Hewlett-Packard Enterprise leads with 112 supercomputers, closely followed by China’s Lenovo company with 92.

The TOP500 list is considered one of the most authoritative rankings of the world’s supercomputers. It is compiled on the basis of the machines’ performance on the Linpack benchmark by experts from U.S. and Germany.

Story compiled with sources from Xinhua and CCTV English.