World’s fastest supercomputer made in China

BEIJING: China has built the world’s fastest supercomputer using locally made microchips, a survey said on Monday, the first time the country has taken the top spot without using US technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight machine is twice as fast as the previous number one, which was built in China with chips from US firm Intel, the Top500 survey of supercomputers said on its website www.top500.org.

China also has more top-ranked supercomputers than the US for the first time since the survey began, with 167 compared to 165.

Located at China’s national supercomputer centre in the eastern city of
Wuxi, the Sunway TaihuLight will be used for climate modelling and life science research.

Its performance ends "speculation that China would have to rely on Western technology to compete effectively in the upper echelons of supercomputing," the survey’s website said.