Information technology abroad: The Chinese supercomputer takes No. 1 ranking in the world

Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is the world’s new No. 1 system with a performance of 33.86 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark, according to the 41^st edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The top five, in addition to Titan, entered two supercomputers from the USA - Sequoia and Mira. The first with a score of 17.17 petaflops has received the third place in the ranking, and the second showed the performance in 8.59 petaflops, took fifth place Top500. All three are in the supercomputer laboratories of the Ministry of Energy. The fourth most powerful supercomputer of the rating was recognized the Japanese K computer – at a Linpack benchmark performance it showed 10.51 petaflops.

The Top500, as six months ago, included eight Russian systems. The most powerful of them - 0.902 petaflops - a supercomputer “Lomonosov”, set in the Moscow State University. It took the 31nd place.

The leader of the ranking, the supercomputer Tianhe-2, was built by the Defense Science and Technology University of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Tianhe-2 consists of 16 thousands of nodes and includes 3.12 million cores. The computer involves processors of the U.S. Company Intel - Xeon and Xeon Phi, but the Tianhe-2 applies Chinese design.