China’s Tianhe-2 has maintained its rank as the world’s most powerful supercomputer for the sixth consecutive time. The biannual Top500 list of supercomputers revealed that China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer has retained its position. Developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, Tianhe-2, or Milky Way 2, has a performance of 33.86 petaflops per second (Pflop/s). It has held the title as the most powerful computer since June 2013.

According to the report, the Chinese supercomputer system can perform almost twice as fast as the Titan of the U.S. Department of Energy, the next on the list, which has a performance of 17.59 Pflop/s. According to the report, since June 2013 there has been no change in the ranking of the world’s top 5 supercomputers in the latest edition of the closely watched list.

The report also indicated significant changes from last year’s list. One change is the sharp decline in the number of systems in the United States, which is currently at 201.  China has almost tripled its number of supercomputers, according to a reputable list of the world’s most powerful machines. The country has 109 high-performance computing systems on the biannual Top500 list of supercomputers, up 196% from 37 just six months ago.

Tidbits…

Supercomputers are developed to perform complex simulations or applications to help scientific research in a wide range of industries such as predicting weather forecasts to making drug discoveries and DNA sequencing.

Try This…

How many Indian machines have found a place in the latest list of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers?