Chinese supercomputer "Milky Way" became the fastest in the world

The Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer has become the fastest in the world. The new record is 2507 teraflops (or more than 2.5 quadrillion operations per second). The leader of the latest version of the TOP500 ranking of the 500 fastest supercomputers, the American Jaguar system, has a performance of 1.75 petaflops. Thus, the highest rate of calculations shown a year ago by an American supercomputer was exceeded by more than 1.4 times.

True, the newcomer has not yet been officially included in the TOP500 rating; the list is expected to be updated on November 1. The developers are to demonstrate the operation of Tianhe-1A, the creation of which several billion dollars have been invested, at a conference in Beijing, RIA Novosti reports.

The supercomputer, whose name translates to "Milky Way", was designed by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin. It consists of a colossus of 7168 graphics processors from Nvidia (Tesla model) and 14336 central processors from Intel (Xeon).

To connect computing units, the Chinese abandoned the use of InfiniBand technology, used for communications in most existing supercomputers, preferring their own development. According to the creators, it provides approximately twice the throughput.

Nvidia says that if the Tianhe-1A were built only on central processing units, 50 thousand of them would be required, and they would occupy twice as many cabinets.

The quest to develop the fastest supercomputer has become a priority for leading technology powers, as these machines are valued for helping solve problems in industries of national interest - defense, energy, finance and science.

Supercomputer technologies are also of interest to businesses: oil and gas corporations use them to search for deposits, and stock brokers use them to automate electronic trading.