Supercomputer battle: Who leads the race, China or US?

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In the battle of the supercomputers, IBM’s Summit has topped China’s Sunway TaihuLight, becoming the world’s fastest, according to a list published on Monday.

The US is always in the strong position of advanced high-tech technology, but when you take a closer look, you will find that China is turning the table.

IBM's Summit /VCG Photo

With 206 of the top 500, China has surpassed the US to become the dominating country in terms of the amount of supercomputer entries in the ranking. China’s Sunway TaihuLight has also been at the top of the list for four consecutive years.

In fact, the race is not just between China and US. Other countries, like Japan and the EU are catching up with their plans for the Exascale supercomputing, that’s a billion billion calculations per second and 10 times faster than today’s fastest supercomputer.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer when it was introduced in Wuxi, China, last December. At the time, it was the fastest computer in the world. /VCG Photo

Why do supercomputers matter?

Due to its unparalleled data-processing capability, the supercomputer can be widely used in fields like artificial intelligence (AI), medical research, and national security.

Like Summit, the one created by IBM, it can perform a calculation task that will take the typical computer 30 years to complete.

“But developing the supercomputer is just the first step, how to apply the technology so that people can benefit from it is what we need to focus,” Fu Haohuan, deputy director of China’s National Supercomputing Center and Associate Professor of Tsinghua University, said.

Although impressive progress has been made, like using its self-developed microprocessor, China still has its own weakness in certain hardware and software technologies, the Chinese computer science expert Pei Deqian told the media that China still has a long way to go.