China dominates new list of world’s top supercomputers

WASHINGTON—Once again, China tops a new list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, not only taking the first two places, but also pulling ahead of the United States in the sheer number of systems being used.

According to a biannual ranking of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, called the Top500 published on Monday, China’s Sunway TaihuLight maintains the lead as the No 1 system for the fourth time, with a performance of 93.01 petaflops.

China’s Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, remains the No 2 system at 33.86 petaflops. Intel chipbased Tianhe-2 had topped the list for three years until it was displaced in November 2015 by TaihuLight, which was built by entirely using processors designed and made in China.

No 3 is Switzerland’s Piz Daint, which is also the most powerful supercomputer in Europe. A new system in Japan, called Gyoukou, is No 4, pushing Titan, the top US system, to No 5.

For the second time in a row there is no system from the US among the top 3, Top500 said.

And that’s not all. The 50th edition of the Top500 ranking also shows that China has overtaken the US in the total number of ranked systems by a margin of 202 to 144.

“It is the largest number of supercomputers China has ever claimed on the Top500 ranking, with the US presence shrinking to its lowest level since the list’s inception 25 years ago,” Top500 said.

“China now clearly shows a substantially larger number of installations than the United States.”

China has also overtaken the US in aggregate performance as well. The Asian country now claims 35.3 percent of the Top500 places, with the US in second place with 29.8 percent.

When it comes to companies making these systems, US-based Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has the lead in the number of installed supercomputers at 123, which represents nearly a quarter of all Top500 systems.

China’s Lenovo followed HPE with 81 systems, down from 88 systems on the June list, and another Chinese company called Inspur jumped to the third position with 56 systems, up from the sixth place and 20 systems only six month ago.

Liu Jun, Inspur’s high performance computing general manager, said China and its research institutes and companies have invested a lot in supporting HPC research, development and innovation.