China Takes Over Supercomputing Title from U.S.

A Chinese supercomputer has taken the number one position in a list of the world’s fastest machines.

The Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, a supercomputer developed at China's National University of Defense Technology, is the most powerful computer in the world.

According to the TOP500 list, the Milky Way-2 delivers almost twice the performance of the Titan, the American computer that previously held the title.

Related: CYBER Special Edition Magaznie 2013

The Titan, a Cray XK7 system that is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, tumbles to number two in the latest list.

In tests, the Milky Way-2 recorded 33.86 petaflops, whereas the Titan's recorded a score of 17.59 petaflops, Zdnet.com reports.

Milky Way-2 is expected to be deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China, by the end of the year.

Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system which lives at the DoE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, also dropped one position to number three in the list.

Sequoia, which was developed in 2011, has achieved 17.17 petaflops, using 1,572,864 cores.

[inlinead]

Fujitsu's "K computer" installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, is the number four system, with a performance of 10.51 petaflops.

Mira, another BlueGene/Q system which is installed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinoisis at number five with 8.59 petaflops.