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Thu Oct 28, 6:33 am ET
BEIJING (AFP) China is set to trump the US to take the number one spot for
the fastest supercomputer ever made in a survey of the world's zippiest
machines, it was reported Thursday.
Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, has a sustained computing speed of 2,507 trillion
calculations per second, making it the fastest computer in China on a list
published Thursday.
But it is also 1.4 times faster that the world's current fastest ranked
supercomputer in the US, housed at a national laboratory in Tennessee,
according to the New York Times.
[Related: Fast train, big dam show China's engineering might]
Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed "thinking" at the National Center for
Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin -- using mostly chips
designed by US companies.
The Tianjin Meteorological Bureau and the National Offshore Oil Corporation
data centre have both started trials using the computer.
"It can also serve the animation industry and bio-medical research," Liu
Guangming, the supercomputing centre's director, told state news agency Xinhua.
According to Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who
maintains the official supercomputer rankings which are due to be released next
week, the Chinese beast "blows away the existing number one machine".
"We don't close the books until November 1, but I would say it is unlikely we
will see a system that is faster," he told the New York Times.
It is not the first time, however, that the US has had its digital crown stolen
by an Asian upstart. In 2002, Japan made a machine with more power than the top
20 American computers put together.
[Related: China, U.S. closer to G20 deal on trade imbalances]
Japan is also working on a new machine called "K Computer" in a bid to take the
supercomputing crown.
Computer designer Steven J. Wallach is not overly worried by China's rise to
computing superpower.
"It's interesting, but it's like getting to the four-minute mile," he told the
New York Times. "The world didn't stop. This is just a snapshot in time.
"They want to show they are number one in the world, no matter what it is."