China With Another New Supercomputer

China has built the world's most powerful computer. The Sunway TaihuLight ,is able to make 93,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. That is more than twice as fast as the Tianhe-2, a Chinese supercomputer that previously held the world record. The new computer is located at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi.

In the ranking of the world's 500 fastest computers, China has now overtaken the United States. 167 computers come from China compared to 165 in the United States. In 2006 there were only 30 Chinese computers on the world's top list, in 2000 China did not have a single computer in the fastest 500 ranking. Other countries currently ranking on the top ten list are from Switzerland, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

The new computer runs on its own operating system, based on Linux. Among other things the Sunway TaihuLight will be used for weather forecasting, manufacturing as well as collecting and analysing large amounts of data.

For the first time China has built a computer with all its components locally manufactured. Up to now most Chinese supercomputers relied on American chip technology. The Sunway TaihuLight uses Chinese-manufactured processors.

The newly built supercomputer shows that China is willing to take on the United States in computer technology. Currently, Intel produces 96% of all computer chips worldwide.