The Top500 supercomputing list, published twice a year, ranks the most powerful computer systems in the world. That list shows China is poised to eclipse Europe in supercomputing.
David Turek, IBM vice-president of deep computing, said, "Within a year, there will be more Top500 systems in China than there are in Europe collectively."
The most recent rankings, published in June, saw China move into the number two spot with its Nebulae system. The supercomputer delivered 1.27 petaflops per second of processing power in a Linpack benchmark, behind the USA’s Jaguar at 1.75 petaflops/s.
One petaflop is one quadrillion calculations per second.
ZDNet says the next stage will be exaflop (1,000 petaflops) systems, which are expected to arrive between 2018 and 2020. These will cost between US$1 billion and US$2 billion to develop.
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