China pushing to emerge as supercomputing super-power

31 May 2010

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China is going all out to emerge as the world's supercomputing superpower, according to scientists. Its Nebulae machine at the National Super Computer Center in Shenzhen, has made it to the second spot on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

In the twice-yearly ranking of the world's fastest 500 computers, it has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops - the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations per second.

The Chinese machine actually takes the top spot in terms of theoretical peak performance but that counts for less than the actual computing speed achieved on a standardised computing test.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, US houses the world's fastest computer the Cray Jaguar, which is mostly used for nuclear weapons simulation and last November it clocked a speed of 1.75 petaflops.

In the previous year's ranking, the Chinese machines took the fifth place in computing speed with a system based at a National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. The machine has been pushed to the seventh place in rankings this year.

The US leads the rest both in terms of the number of supercomputers as well as the dominant manufacturer.
This year, the US had more than half of the world's fastest 500 super computers at 282, an increase from 277 last November. The Chinese, however, appear all set to take on the US dominance.

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