China has the world’s fastest supercomputer
China's Tianhe-1A super computer is claimed to be the world's fastest computer. The machine, built by the National University of Defense Technology, has 2.507 petaflops per second of peak processing power. In simple words, it can make 2,507 trillion calculations per second.Tianhe-1A (Tianhe means the Milky Way) was unveiled on Thursday at the annual meeting of National High Performance Computing in Beijing.
The next set of rankings for the world's fastest computers is yeat to be revealed, but Jack Dongarra, computer scientist of University of Tennessee who maintains the official supercomputer rankings, said he didn't believe that he would come across a faster supercomputer.
The US boasts of the fact that it has more than 250 of the world's fastest 500 super computers. China has 24 of the top 500 super computers of the world, but it is investing huge amounts of money into the supercomputer technology to strengthen its position further.
US technology giants Intel and Nvidia supplied thousands of chips that were used to make the super machine, Tianhe-1A, which is housed in the northern port city of Tianjin, close to Beijing. But, the networking technology that lets information to be exchanged among servers at astonishing speeds was developed by Chinese researchers.
Former number one super computer Cray XT5 Jaguar, which is housed at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, has a peak processing power of 1.75 petaflops per second.
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