Beijing: China's military computer
scientists on Thursday unveiled the nation's fastest supercomputer
which it claimed could rival the performance of the world's
most powerful computing devices.
The supercomputer, named Tianhe, meaning Milky Way, is
theoretically able to do more than 1 quadrillion calculations
per second (one petaflop) at peak speed.
The National University of Defence Technology (NUDT)
said the USD 88.24 million device can handle within a day a
single-day task which might take a mainstream dual-core
personal computer 160 years to complete, working non-stop.
NUDT president Zhang Yulin said the 155-tonne system,
with 103 refrigerator-like cabinets lined up on an area of
about 1,000 square metres, is expected to process seismic data
for oil exploration, conduct bio-medical computing and help
design aerospace vehicles.
Tianhe's peak performance reaches 1.206 petaflops, and
it runs at 563.1 teraflops on the Linpack benchmark, which was
originally developed by US computer scientist Jack Dongarra,
the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The giant device, a product of 200 computer scientists
and two years' work, would be moved to the National
Supercomputing Centre in Tianjin at the end of 2009, said Li
Nan, chief coordinator of the programme.
Of the world's fastest 500 supercomputers, the United
States alone has invented 291, including the top 10, Europe
has 145 and Asia 49, the report said.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009, 18:19