New Chinese system named world's top supercomputer

A new Chinese computer system that can make 93 quadrillions calculations a second has claimed the top spot on the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

The computer called Sunway TaihuLight developed by the National Research Centre of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology is built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

The supercomputer installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in China displaced Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that has claimed the top 1 spot on the past six TOP500 lists.

The closely watched list is issued twice a year.

Sunway TaihuLight is twice as fast and three times as efficient as Tianhe-2, which posted a performance of 33.86 quadrillions of calculations per second.

Titan, a Cray X40 system installed at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is now at the third position, with 17.59 quadrillions of calculations per second.

Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Fujitsu's K computer installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science  in Japan are at the fourth and fifth positions respectively.

Other systems in the top ten include a BlueGene/Q system called Mira in the US, a Cray X40 system known as Trinity, and the most powerful system in Europe - a Cray XC30 system called Piz Daint at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre.

Hazel Hen installed at High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart in Germany and Shaheen II in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, both Cray XC40 systems, are at the ninth and tenth positions.

The latest list marks the first time since the inception of the TOP500 that the US is not home to the largest number of systems.

With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the last few years, China leads with 167 systems and the US is second with 165.

China also leads the performance category, thanks to the top two systems on the list.