China has the world’s most powerful supercomputer for the third time in a row as the country once again ups its presence in the global top 500.<\/p>\n
Tianhe-2 was top of the twice-yearly list that keeps tabs on supercomputer development and growth.<\/p>\n
Since the last list, China had 20% more supercomputers in the top 500, while US representation went down 15%.<\/p>\n
However, the US still dominates the chart with 233 computers making the latest tally.<\/p>\n
China had 76, up from 63 in the last count. This is almost as many as the UK (30), France (27) and Germany (23) combined.<\/p>\n
The full list will be published on Monday at a conference in Leipzig, Germany.<\/p>\n
Power<\/p>\n
The\u00a0top500\u00a0list is a widely-recognised barometer of the state of worldwide supercomputing. It has been published twice yearly since 1993.<\/p>\n
All the computers are measured against the same criteria – a benchmark first devised in 1979 but since improved as computing has become ever more sophisticated.<\/p>\n
Such is the immense power of the supercomputers, their computational ability is measured in petaflop\/s – quadrillions of calculations per second.<\/p>\n
The top performing computer, Tianhe-2, had its power measured at 33.86 petaflop\/s (quadrillions of calculations per second). It has been just five years since IBM’s Roadrunner became the first computer to break the 1 petaflop\/s mark. That machine was shut down in 2013 due to excessive power consumption.<\/p>\n
The entire top 500 list of supercomputers combined offered 133.7 teraflop\/s (trillions of calculations per second).<\/p>\n
Tianhe-2 is owned by the Chinese government and operated by the National University of Defence Technology. It is used as a “research and educational” tool.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has the world’s most powerful supercomputer for the third time in a row as the country once again ups its presence in the global top 500. Tianhe-2 was top of the twice-yearly list that keeps tabs on supercomputer development and growth. Since the last list, China had 20% more supercomputers in the top 500, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":26719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[18,1474,593],"yoast_head":"\n