Jun. 2 – While India is known throughout the world for its IT prowess, when it comes to supercomputing, the nation that made outsourcing a household phrase is going down, not up. China, on the other hand, introduced itself to the world of supercomputers, claiming the No. 2 spot with a machine located in Shenzhen.
The Nebulae supercomputer, located in the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen and supported by Intel and Nvidia chips, performed 1.271 petaflops (one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second) to help the system claim the second spot in a global ranking of the 500 fastest computers in the world. India’s fastest supercomputer, Tata Sons-owned EKA, slipped from ninth to 33rd.
The rankings were made public on Monday at the International Supercomputer Conference in Hamburg, Germany.
The Cray Jaguar supercomputer based in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, United States was ranked as the fastest at 1.75 petaflops.
Supercomputers are used for scientific and engineering research like complex climate change modeling and materials science.
According to The Economic Times, Tata Son’s EKA was ranked at ninth fastest in 2008 when it was installed. It slipped to 18th last year. EKA carries a peak speed of 0.172 petaflops. The computer cost an estimated US$30 million to construct.
In last year’s rankings, China had the fifth-fastest computer, a system based at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin. That computer slipped two spots to seventh in this year’s survey.
The United States designed the first supercomputers during the 1960s and continues to dominate the industry, with 282 of the world’s fastest 500 computers on the list. China has 24, while India claims five.
China actually has better software talents than India, as is shown in this competition:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134122/China_dominates_NSA_backed_coding_contest_
Just on the hardware side. I use to remember a time when certain PCs and certain software were restricted from being exported to China from the West.
It is great that the Chinese are developing their own supercomputers. It will help them not just in simulations of all sorts but also for designing the complex products that governments and the public need going into the future.
Another development in engineering by China. They have developed an after-burner for diesel and electrical trains that could push a train’s speed theoretically up to 500 km/hour. This would be useful for their rapidly expanding railway network.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90881/7013090.html