For the fourth consecutive year, China has retained the top spot in the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers for its Tianhe-2, according to a biannual Top500 list released today.Tianhe-2, which means ‘Milky Way-2’ in Chinese, was developed by China’s National University of Defence Technology. It can operate at 33.86 petaflops per second (Pflop/s), the equivalent of 33,860 quadrillion calculations per second.
The updated list came close on the heels of an announcement last week by the US that it will spend $325 million on building two supercomputers, which will be three to five times faster than Tianhe-2.
Super computer Titan, installed at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, remains the No. 2 system with a performance of 17.59 Pflop/s.
The No. 3 spot was acquired by Sequoia, installed at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Japan’s K computer was also inducted in the top five.
