Tuesday, June 18, 2013

China Developed the Fastest Computer of the World Called Tianhe-2

A survey conducted by Top 500, revealed on 17 June 2013 that the Chinese supercomputer is the fastest computer of the world. This Chinese supercomputer is called Tianhe-2 and it replaced US machine called Titan, which was earlier said to be the fastest computer of the world.
 
About the fastest computer of the world, Tianhe-2

• Tianhe-2 means Milky Way-2. 
• Tianhe-2 is a supercomputer developed by China's National University of Defense Technology.
• It achieved the processing speeds of 33.86 petaflops (1000 trillion calculations) per second on a benchmarking test conducted by Top 500 survey of supercomputers. It surpassed the rival, Titan (the US computer) which achieved the processing speed of 17.59 petaflops per second.
• In November 2010, Tianhe-2’s predecessor- Tianhe-1 was said to be the fastest computer of the world. 
• Almost all the parts of Tianhe-2 are developed in China, apart from the main processors which are designed by Intel, the US firm. 
• The primary features of Tianhe-2 are also developed in China and these include the Operating System, interconnect, software as well as the front-end processors. 
• The cost of this supercomputer is 100 million US dollar. 
• The peak performance speed of this computer, according to National University of Defence Technology, is 54.9 quadrillion operations per second.
• It encompasses 16000 nodes, each with three Xeon Phi processors and two Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge processors, which gives it a combined total of 3120000 computing cores.

However, it is important to note that US is still leading in overall supercomputer rankings. 252 systems of US make it to the list of top 500 supercomputers of the world. The overall number of European machines is 112, while that of Asian machines is 119. 

The Top 500 list is produced two times in a year. The supercomputers in this list are rated on the basis of their speed of performance in a benchmark test which is conducted by experts from US as well as Germany.

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