Communications of the ACM
Chinese Supercomputer Overtakes Jaguar
China's National University of Defense Technology's Tianhe-1A supercomputer has taken the top ranking from Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar supercomputer on the latest Top500 ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers. The Tianhe-1A achieved a performance level of 2.67 petaflops per second, while Jaguar achieved 1.75 petaflops per second. The Nebulae, another Chinese-built supercomputer, came in third with a performance of 1.27 petaflops per second.
"What the Chinese have done is they're exploiting the power of [graphics processing units], which are . . . awfully close to being uniquely suited to this particular benchmark," says University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne professor Bill Gropp. Tianhe-1A is a Linux computer built from components from Intel and Nvidia. "What we should be focusing on is not losing our leadership and being able to apply computing to a broad range of science and engineering problems," Gropp says.
Overall, China had five supercomputers ranked in the top 100, while 42 of the top 100 computers were U.S. systems.
From ZDNet UK
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