China is the world’s reigning champ with its new supercomputer

The latest TOP500 list of the world's top supercomputers was published on June 20th. China retained its number one spot with an entirely new machine that was designed and built in China. CSC's Sisu ranks 69th on the list. The Taito supercluster still made it to the lower end of the list (440).

The battle between who has the world's most powerful supercomputers has long been fought between the United States and China. For the last seven years, China has held on to the number one spot. Now, the power rankings on the entire TOP500 list seem to be shifting towards Asia. On the latest list, China has 167 systems, while the Americans have to be satisfied with "only" 165 supercomputers. China raced ahead of the US in the total computing power of its supercomputers, spearheaded by its new champion.

The new champ, Sunway TaihuLight, is up and running at the National Supercomputing Center in the city of Wuxi. In addition to boasting a staggering 93 petaflops, TaihuLight is also exceptional in that it is the first supercomputer whose processors and interconnect were designed and manufactured in China.

Two of the top ten are from Europe

In addition to two Chinese and four US systems, the top 10 includes supercomputers from Japan, Switzerland, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

The most powerful European supercomputers that made the top 10 are located at CSC's sister centres – Piz Daint at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) and the Hazel Hen at High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). These are the largest computing centres in Europe. Finnish researchers can also apply for computation time on these supercomputers through the PRACE research infrastructure. CSC's experts help researchers with applying for resources.

CSC's current supercomputer Sisu was updated to its current configuration in summer 2014, and it achieved a peak ranking of 37 on the TOP500 list. Sisu's ranking now dropped from 59 (last November) to 69. It is to be expected that its ranking will drop more rapidly from now on, as happened to the Taito supercluster.

Of the Nordic countries, Sweden currently has the most powerful supercomputer and the greatest amount of computing capacity for research use. Finland is slightly ahead of Denmark, while Norway brings up the rear.

Research needs ever-greater resources

Due to digitalisation, research that makes use of supercomputers is growing at an accelerating pace. Thanks to supercomputers, calculating scientific data is faster and more efficient, and heavy simulations are also becoming common in fields such as the biosciences and sociology. Internationally, competitive resources have played a vital role in breakthroughs in many fields of science.

"Ever-greater resources are required in research on the climate, forms of energy and pharmaceuticals, to name but a few areas. We must continuously develop systems and the available computing and storage capacity," says Pekka Lehtovuori, Director at CSC.

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The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), held in Frankfurt, Germany, from 19 to 23 June, is the largest high-performance computing event in Europe where computer users and manufacturers meet. This annual event attracts close to 3,000 people from around the world to network, learn about the latest industry news and see the latest products. The TOP500 list of the world's supercomputers was published at the event: http://top500.org/lists/2016/06/

 

Additional information

Pekka Lehtovuori
Director, Services for Research
CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd
pekka.lehtovuori@csc.fi
tel. +358 (0)50 381 9723
 

International Supercomputing Conference: www.isc-hpc.com
TOP500 list: http://www.top500.org