Chinese supercomputer ranked world’s fastest

NEW DELHI - A Chinese supercomputer has been ranked the world’s fastest machine in a list issued by US and European researchers.

The Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, is capable of sustaining computation at 2.57 petaflop/s, which equates to a mind-numbing 2.57 quadrillions of calculations per second.

As a result, the former number one system-the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Jaguar in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that achieved 1.75 petaflop/s-is now ranked in second place, according to the 36th edition of the TOP500 list, reports the China Daily.

“China is rapidly developing its own high performance computing (HPC) capability. It can assemble the largest systems, it can deploy them, and put together the researchers who can effectively use them.

With HPC, China can better compete on the world stage,” said Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Dongarra saw Tianhe’s topping the world’s supercomputer rankings as “a sign that the US is losing it edge on high performance computing technology”, instead of “a threat to US dominance in high-performance computing.”

The third place is also held by a Chinese system called Nebulae, which was also knocked down one spot from the June 2010 TOP500 list with the appearance of Tianhe-1A.

Both Tianhe and Nebulae use processors from two American companies.

“So yes China still lags in terms of processor technology.

“However China is developing the processor technology. So I wouldn’t be surprised that in a year or two the Chinese processor technology will be on a par with the US processor technology,” he said.

The Tianhe-1A has mainly US processors but the interconnect was developed and produced in China.

The interconnect is what allow information to flow from a processor to another processor and is critical to the overall performance of the system. (ANI)