China Unveils a Record-Breaking Supercomputer 

China’s Sunway TaihuLight has been formally declared the swiftest supercomputer on earth. This is interesting news since the previous title-holding gadget was also a Chinese innovation. As a result, the hot China-US contest for the manufacture of fast-processor computers turned out to be a blowout as the populous Asian nation seemed to dominate this coveted tech niche by surpassing the old Linux apparatus and computing systems.

The groundbreaking discovery puts China in a prestigious category marked by steady technological advancements since the country didn’t own a single claim among the top 500 word’s swiftest machines fifteen years ago.

However, the world’s record holder is in many ways akin to your personal desktop. According to Michael Papka of Argonne Leadership Computer – which owns the sixth fastest computer on earth – the terrific Chinese unit has a processor that resembles that of an ordinary desktop or laptop. The only difference, Papka clarifies, is that it is not a single processor but several of them intricately wound into one.

For comparison, the new innovation has exponentially more precise simulations and models than your MacBook. Another exciting analogy is that the now fastest computer has 10.6 million cores – making them about three times more than those of the previous record holder, China’s Tianhe-2. This yields greater efficiency, less power consumption, and impressively higher execution speeds.

Dongarra, the unbeatable brain behind the 1993 benchmark against which supercomputers are presently compared, published an independent assessment of the unprecedented gadget. The leading scientist hails the wonderful innovation as a breathtaking success that has profoundly set a hitherto unimaginable precedence. Although hardware is not a very important aspect since supercomputers are fashioned for specific task, TaihuLight passes this basic test as well. This is because the astounding machine has exceptional hardware capacity that other gadgets in this special category do not have.

It is unanimously accepted that the just announced Chinese computer is faster than anything that is expected from the United States before 1918. While the American Department of Energy is set to unveil supercomputers that range between 150 and 200 petaflops by 1918 and hopefully surpass China’s new feat, experts say that two years are like an eternity in the computing world, and that it is quite likely that the Asian torchbearer will have set yet another a new record.

Nonetheless, the United States’ tech fraternity is working around the clock to catch up with their Chinese counterparts, with the congress channeling colossal amounts of funding into the expensive project. Moreover, technology wars between the two countries are set to intensify since the US outlawed sale of Intel Xeon processor to Chinese companies a few years ago, citing certain sensitive security concerns.

However, the ban seems to have had an unanticipated positive influence on the America’s archrivals. Instead of giving up, China’s scientists seem to have undertaken extensive research to find better indigenous processors used in the manufacture of the highly innovative record breaker.

The freshly unveiled prized supercomputer will be used to further advanced manufacturing, do earth-system modeling, enhance weather forecasting, boost studies in life science, and aid huge data analytics. While this may sound extremely tremendous to a computing novice, the tasks above are just but a tiny slice of what supercomputers can do.