China on Monday aced the list of supercomputers compiled by TOP500 for the seventh time in a row, reported The New York Times. The research organisation, which ranks supercomputers twice a year, put Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer at the top of the list. The machine is twice as powerful as the one that secured the prestigious position for the country last time.
The supercomputer is located at the Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province. Shanghai High Performance IC Design Center designed the SW26010 processor used to power the machine. "It’s not based on an existing architecture. They built it themselves. This is a system that has Chinese processors," said Jack Dongarra, the man behind the measurement method used by TOP500 to put together the list of supercomputers. He is a professor at the University of Tennessee.
Beijing not only has the most powerful machine this time, it also has the most supercomputers on the list, even more than the United States. This is the first time the Chinese have more machines on the list than the Americans, according to Bloomberg. But the bigger reason for China to rejoice comes from the fact that it has made its own microprocessor chip this time, instead of getting it from the Silicon Valley. This is viewed as a big step by the country towards developing its own domestic industry for making such chips.
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