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A Chinese supercomputer has been declared the fastest supercomputer in the world

Wednesday 22nd of June 2016

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The Sunway TaihuLight takes the top spot from previous record-holder Tianhe-2 (also located in China), and more than triples the latter's speed.
The new number one is capable of performing some 93 quadrillion calculations per second (otherwise known as petaflops) and is roughly five times more powerful than the speediest US system, which is now ranked third worldwide.

Sunway-TaihuLight can perform calculations with processing speed of 124.5 petaflops per second (Pflops). It is world’s first system to surpass 100 petaflops.


This supercomputer has displaced Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that has claimed the top spot on the past six Top500 lists.


Sunway TaihuLight



  • Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer has been developed by the China’s National Research Centre of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC).

  • It has been built entirely using processors designed and made in China. It can perform 93 quadrillions calculations per second.

  • It is intended for use in research and engineering including climate, weather, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and data analytics.


*Note: One petaflop is equal to one quadrillion sustained floating point operations per second.


Top500 list



  • Second position: An Intel-based Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer which can perform calculations with processing speed of 33.86 Pflops.

  • Third position: Supercomputer Titan of the US Department of Energy. It has a performance of 17.59 Pflops.

  • Fourth position: Supercomputer It is an IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

  • Fifth position: Supercomputer Fujitsu’s K computer. It has been installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Japan.


Top Countries in the list: China (1st position) with 167 super computer systems, US (2nd position) with 165 systems, Japan (3rd position), Germany (4th position) with 26 systems, France (5th position) with 18 systems, Britain (6th position) with 12 systems.


The Top500 list: It is one of the most authoritative and prestigious rankings list of the world’s supercomputers. The list is compiled on the basis of the performance of supercomputers by experts from the US and Germany based on the Linpack benchmark.

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