World’s Fastest Supercomputer is Chinese

Sunway TaihuLight is now the world’s fastest supercomputer and is 3 times faster than the previous title holder, Tianhe-2, as per a report by US and German researchers. Built and situated in China’s National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, the machine can process at a speed of 93 petaflops/s. A flop is a ‘floating point operation,’ which is a type of math problem. The computer also has its chips made in China. It’s primary computing engine worth ₹16 cr, ShenWei, can produce 140 gigaflops per second. Tianhe-2 was primary built using Intel chips, but the US imposed an embargo on their sale for fear that they may be used in nuclear weapons.

Key Specs:

• Linpack: 93 Petaflops (Rmax)
• Peak performance: 125.4 Petflops (Rpeak)
• Processor: Sunway SW26010 1.4 GHz processor
• Cores per socket: 260
• Instruction Set: RISC instruction set developed by Sunway
• Interconnect: their TOP500 submission says “Sunway design” but Mellanox supplied the Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and switch chips. Sunway may not call it InfiniBand, but that is exactly what it is. China has political reasons for characterizing the overall system domestic technology.
• Cabinets: 40 Water-cooled cabinets, each with 3 Petaflops of peak performance
• Power consumption: 15.27 Megawatts
• Mflops/watt: 6051