China launches new generation supercomputer

The new generation supercomputer Tianhe Xingyi launched on December 6 performs better than the famous Tianhe-2 supercomputer that held the title of the world's fastest for many years.

The Tianhe Xingyi supercomputer surpasses Tianhe-2 in many aspects. Photo: CFG — The Tianhe Xingyi supercomputer surpasses Tianhe-2 in many aspects. Photo: *CFG*

The National Supercomputing Center (NSC) in Guangzhou, China, introduced Tianhe Xingyi, a domestic supercomputer, at an event in Guangdong Province, Interesting Engineering reported. The NSC is also the organization that guided the development of the Tianhe-2 supercomputer.

Tianhe Xingyi was built based on a domestic design. Although the exact parameters of this supercomputer were not disclosed, NSC director Lu Yutong said that the latest supercomputer surpasses Tianhe-2 in many aspects such as computing power, interconnect efficiency, storage capacity and application performance. This puts Tianhe Xingyi in the top 10 supercomputers in the world that are independently built, not dependent on US technology. China focuses on developing processors like Loongson and the necessary links to build supercomputers.

Supercomputers play a vital role in the development of a country by helping to solve the most complex technical problems. The United States often leads the world in having the fastest supercomputers in the TOP500 list. The high computing power of supercomputers can be used to conduct simulations to understand climate change, research materials, explore the universe and find cures for many diseases. Recently, supercomputers have played an important role in developing AI models.

China's supercomputer efforts began in the 1980s, and it took the country two decades to make notable progress. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, China attracted global attention with the development of the Tianhe-1 supercomputer. Three years later, under the guidance of the NSC, the National University of Defense Technology introduced the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which topped the TOP500 list.

Tianhe-2 continued to hold the position for the next 3 years. Today, Tianhe-2 may have lost the top spot, but it still remains among the world's top 10 supercomputers. In 2019, China had 228 supercomputers on the TOP500 list, surpassing the United States. They are also currently developing a supercomputer that can complete a quintillion calculations per second.

An Khang (According to Interesting Engineering )

Source link