According to latest survey results published on last Monday, the defence
scientists of Republic of China have
successfully developed Tianhe-2, the
world's fastest supercomputer. It is
well capable of handling 33.86 quadrillion operations each second.
This new Chinese computer has eventually surpassed US Titan supercomputer which was the former fastest supercomputer
of the world. China has developed a lot in past few years especially in the
technology areas, and it has added many feathers to its crown from the
technological world.
The National University of Defence Technology built the computer, and
according to it the Tianhe-2 has the
ability to pick up its performance speed up to 54.9 quadrillion operations per
second. China must be feeling very proud after achieving the desired success in
such a short span.
It has to be added here that the previous version of the new
supercomputer, which was labeled as the Tianhe-1A, was also once the world's
fastest supercomputer. It managed to hold the position at the top from November
2010 to June 2011. After that Japan’s K computer defeated it in the battle of
speed to claim the top spot.
As per TOP500 project that ranks 500 most powerful worldwide computer
systems, by the end of this current running year Tianhe-2 (also known as Milky
Way-2) will be offered to the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China.
Tianhe-2 was expected to be deployed in 2015 or later, but surprisingly
the Chinese scientists managed to develop it much earlier. This is a great
success indeed, and it has helped China to regain its coveted top slot at the
worldwide most advanced computer system.
There are some key features that make Tianhe-2 especial and best in its
kind at least for the time being. It has 16,000 nodes each with three Xeon Phi
processors and two Intel Xeon IvyBridge processors. This simply means it has a combined
total of 3,120,000 computing cores. Sometimes I just wonder how much the
technology has grown up over the years.
As I mentioned before the Tianhe-2 can easily operate 33.86 petaflops
per second. The Top500 already provided it the honor of calling as the world's
fastest computing system.
Earlier the United States was enjoying the No 1 position with its own
supercomputer named Titan, which is a Cray XK7 system, and it was deployed at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory of the country’s Department of Energy (DOE). Now the
US Titan was placed at the 2nd position.
Mr. Jack Dongarra, who is the current Editor of Top500, examined all the
development facilities of Tanhe-2 in May 2013, and he said that this particular
Chinese system is noteworthy in many ways. He also expressed his happiness
while talking to his entire experiences.
Mr. Dongarra has eventually released an official statement on this
matter. In the statement he quoted, “Most of
the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using
Intel for the main compute part. That is, operating system, front-end
processors and software are mainly Chinese."
Feedback
According to you which country is the current technological superpower
of the world? Is it China or Japan or the US? Or is it some other countries?
Feel free to share your thoughts with us. We will be obliged to hear from you
all.
