China has built what's believed to be the fastest computer in the world, outpacing the top American machine and boosting Beijing's role as a key technology player.
Named Tianhe-1A, which means Milky Way in Mandarin, China's new supercomputer has 168 graphics processing units -- the type of graphics chips used in video games -- and 14,336 Intel CPUs, according to PC World. All of these processors were made by U.S. companies, but they're linked together by new Chinese-invented technology.
The supercomputer can perform 2,507 trillion calculations, or 2.507 petaflops, per second, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported. But the machine's untested, theoretical speed is nearly two times that figure, it said. That's 1.4 times faster than the previous record holder, a supercomputer housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Full story link: http://www.aolnews.com/world/articl...-fastest-supercomputer-the-tianhe-1a/19692996
Named Tianhe-1A, which means Milky Way in Mandarin, China's new supercomputer has 168 graphics processing units -- the type of graphics chips used in video games -- and 14,336 Intel CPUs, according to PC World. All of these processors were made by U.S. companies, but they're linked together by new Chinese-invented technology.
The supercomputer can perform 2,507 trillion calculations, or 2.507 petaflops, per second, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported. But the machine's untested, theoretical speed is nearly two times that figure, it said. That's 1.4 times faster than the previous record holder, a supercomputer housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Full story link: http://www.aolnews.com/world/articl...-fastest-supercomputer-the-tianhe-1a/19692996
