Chinese supercomputer crowned the world’s fastest using locally-designed processors

A CHINESE supercomputer has been named the world’s fastest computer, retaining the country’s top position on the International Supercomputing Conference’s Top 500 list again this year.

For the first time, the winning system uses Chinese-designed processors instead of U.S. technology, announced the conference which is currently being held in Frankfurt, Germany.

Researchers in the United States and Germany who maintained its ranking said on Monday that the latest unit to top the speed list is the Sunway TaihuLight developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology.

It displaced Tianhe-2, another Chinese computer that held the top ranking for the past six years.

Supercomputer technology has long been a field dominated by the United States, and is used for weather forecasting, designing nuclear weapons and other specialized purposes.

The Sunway TaihuLight was built entirely with processors designed and produced in China. The Tianhe-2 uses chips made by Intel Corp.

Center director Prof. Dr. Guangwen Yang said the system will be formally introduced on Tuesday afternoon.

“As the first number one system of China that is completely based on homegrown processors, the Sunway TaihuLight system demonstrates the significant progress that China has made in the domain of designing and manufacturing large-scale computation systems,” Yang said, as quoted by TOP500 News.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

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