China has reduced their dependency on imported technology, primarily from United States of America, as they have built world’s fastest supercomputer by using domestic chip technology. It is the first time that a supercomputer is manufactured by Chinese-designed semiconductors, subsequently posing a challenge to US.
The name of the newly-produced machine is Sunway TaihuLight which is located in the Jiangsu province at the state-funded Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. According to the Top500 Supercomputer Sites, the machine is twice as powerful as the previous one which was built in China but the chips used were from US form, Intel.
In a survey, it has been revealed that for the first time ever, China has more supercomputers than the US. China surpassed US by mere 2 supercomputers to become top-ranked supercomputer holder in the world.
While recording his statement, Jack Dongarra, a professor at the University of Tennessee and creator of the measurement method used by TOP500, stated that:
“It is not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves. This is a system that has Chinese processors. This is also the first time that the Chinese have more systems than the U.S., so that, I think, is a striking accomplishment. The Chinese had no machines in the 2001 list. In the latest, China has 167 entries compared with 165 for the U.S.”
According to the ranking, out of the top 10 fastest computers, two are in China, with four in the US. Others are in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.
Supercomputers are multiple server computers linked together in a way that allows them to process huge data sets and run the most complex calculations. While they’re hugely expensive and relatively rare, they showcase new technologies that often make their way into corporate data centers.
Sunway TaihuLight machine comprises of some massive 41000 chips, each with 260 processor cores. This makes for a total of 10.65 million cores, compared to the 560,000 cores in America’s top machine. In terms of memory, it’s relatively light with just 1.3 petabytes used for the entire machine. This means that it’s unusually energy efficient, drawing just 15.3 megawatts of power.
Sunway TaihuLight’s victory is a particular challenge to Intel’s dominance in computer servers, where it currently controls about 96% of the market. It announced a joint venture with a Chinese organization to domesticate some of its technology earlier this year.
This move from China has definitely posed a challenge to US and all the countries. By ending the Intel dominance, China has really proved themselves as a market leader in terms of supercomputers especially in such a short span, knowing that they did not have a single machine in 2001.
image credit: independent.co.uk / Rex