Mainland narrows the gap with Asian leader Japan but big-money foreign manufacturers still on top of the list
About four years since mainland players launched their first commercial supercomputers, China has narrowed the gap with Japan to become Asia's fastest-growing market for these high-performance computing systems.
The latest survey of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers shows the mainland with 28 ranked systems - an increase from 17 last year - that include machines from local manufacturers Dawning Information Industry Corp, Lenovo Group and Galactic Computing.
Japan remained just slightly ahead with 29 systems, up from 21 a year ago, based on the latest rankings announced last week at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany.
'China has continued to improve on the number of installed systems ranked in the world's Top500 supercomputer list and local manufacturers are competing well in the mainland market,' said Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computer sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is also one of three researchers who have compiled the top-ranked supercomputers list twice a year since 1993.
The toughest computing problems are tackled on bulky supercomputers that could fill a large room. These are used for such complex tasks as meteorological modelling, human-genome mapping and nuclear-blast simulation to more commercial endeavours as financial modelling and product design.
Chinese-made supercomputers in the 27th edition of the Top500 list included the No53 ranked Dawning 4000A at the Shanghai Supercomputer Centre, No125 Lenovo DeepComp 6800 at the Chinese Academy of Science and No224 Galactic Supercomputing Blade System GT4000 at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen. The Dawning 4000A was the first Chinese-made supercomputer to make a big splash on the world's Top500 rankings when it landed at No10 in 2004.