China tops global supercomputer speed list for seventh year
TaihuLight, which does a quadrillion calculations per second, uses only home-made processors
A Chinese supercomputer has topped a list of the world’s fastest computers for the seventh straight year – and for the first time the winner uses only Chinese-designed processors instead of US technology.
The announcement on Monday is a new milestone for Chinese supercomputer development and a further erosion of past American dominance of the field.
Last year’s Chinese winner in the TOP500 ranking maintained by researchers in the US and Germany slipped to second place, followed by a computer at the US government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Also this year, China displaced the United States for the first time as the country with the most supercomputers in the top 500. China had 167 systems and the United States had 165. Japan was a distant third with 29.
Supercomputers are among the technologies targeted by the Communist Party for development and have received heavy financial support.
