China builds world’s fastest supercomputer

CHINA: China has been confirmed as the creator of the world’s fastest super computer. The Tianhe-1A is capable of 2.67 quadrillions of computing operations per second, pulling ahead of the United States in the global supercomputing race. The lead of the China-made system was confirmed by the 36th edition of TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, which was released hours ago on the TOP500 list website.

Tianhe-1A was followed by the former No. 1 system, the U.S.-made Cray XT5 “Jaguar” system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee. The Jaguar performs at 1.75 quadrillions per second, 92 percent slower than the Tianhe-1A, running Linpack, the benchmark used to officially determine the speed of supercomputers. China also occupied third place with Nebulae, a 1.27 petaflop-per second system which was installed in the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen.

Jack Dongarra, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and supervisor of the TOP500 list, said in an email interview with Xinhua, that “It’s more of a sign that China is serious in pursuing high performance computing to aid the growth of science, engineering and economic competitiveness.”

Tianjin, Monday, Xinhua