At the International Supercomputer Conference, the latest TOP500 list of supercomputers was announced. To no one’s surprise, Linux, is the top operating system for the world’s fastest computers, but many may be shocked to find China now has the most and fastest supercomputers.
For a long time now, China has had the fastest supercomputer in the world: The Intel-basedTianhe-2 or Milky Way 2. This year, at the 2016 International Supercomputer Conference in Frankfurt, Germany, the TOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world was topped by a new system made entirely of Chinese designed and made processors: The Sunway TaihuLight.
TOP500
The US government’s ban of high end Intel, Nvidia and AMD CPUs and GPUs sales for use in Chinese supercomputers didn’t work. China doesn’t need our chips to create the best supercomputers on the planet.
Making matters even worse, from an American viewpoint, this is the first time since the TOP500 list debuted in 1993 that the US was not home to the largest number of systems. With a surge in industrial and research installations, China leads with 167 systems, while the United States is second with 165. China also leads in terms of performance thanks to Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2.