China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer tops the global top 500 list for a consecutive third time, taking over the title of “world’s most powerful computer.”
Developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, Tianhe-2, also known as the Milky Way-2, reported a performance of 33.86 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the Linpack benchmark in the latest edition of the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
In other words, the supercomputer can operate at 33.86 petaflops per second, equivalent to 33,860 trillion calculations per second. Tianhe-2’s one hour of calculation equals 1,000 years of difficult sums by a whopping 1.3 billion people.
The results were announced at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany. The top 10 supercomputers as listed by Top500 organizers remained mostly unchanged from the last list. Cray XC30 computer, which is “installed at an undisclosed US government site,” is the only new entrance making to the list this year.
Although the US dominated the list by accounting for 233 supercomputers, its share went down from 265 recorded in the November 2013 list. China’s share on the list rose from 63 to 76, followed by a host of European countries including the UK with 30, France with 27 and Germany with 23 supercomputers.
Among the leading supercomputer suppliers, HP accounts for the maximum with 182, IBM is in second position with 176, and Cray follows with 51.
