The Shenwei Taihu Light supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. [Photo/WeChat account: wuxifabu2013]
A Wuxi-made supercomputer has claimed the crown of the world's fastest and most powerful, dethroning Guangzhou's Tianhe-2, according to TOP500's half-yearly rankings.
The Sunway TaihuLight can perform a staggering 93 petaflops/s (quadrillions of calculations per second), and marks the first time a Chinese supercomputer has topped the list using completely domestic technology, with all of its processors being designed and made in China.
Running on a Linux-based operating system and comprised of more than 10 million locally-made processing cores and over 40,000 nodes, it is twice as fast and three times as efficient as the Tianhe-2.
Developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC), the supercomputer is housed at Wuxi's National Supercomputing Center. The rapid progress of China's supercomputer development has been groundbreaking; in 2003, China's fastest supercomputer was ranked only 51st in the world.
The computer's primary functions will be to process big data, advanced manufacturing and weather forecasting.
Jack Dongarra, a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and editor of the list, said, "It's a trend with China. They had no systems in 2001, and today they surpass the United States. No other nation has seen such rapid growth."
China now has two supercomputers in the top 10 of the TOP500 list and has held the top spot since 2013.
