China’s Tianhe-2 retained its position as World’s most powerful Supercomputer

Tianhe-2, the supercomputer of China, retained its numero uno position as the most powerful supercomputer in the world. This was revealed by the 46th edition of the bi-annual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers released on 17 November 2015.

The supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defence technology topped the list for the sixth consecutive time.

Tianhe-2 means Milky Way-2 and it led the list with a performance of 33.86 petaflop per seconds (quadrillions of calculations per second or Pflop/s) on the Linpack benchmark.

Main Highlights of TOP500 list

• Top 10 in the list largely remain unchanged compared to July 2015 TOP500 list with only two new entries.
• The two new entries are: Trinity supercomputer built by Cray and jointly deployed by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and the Hazel-Hen system built by Cray and installed at the HLRS - Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart in Germany.
• China nearly tripled the number of systems on the November 2015 TOP500 list
• The number of systems in the United States (US) has fallen to the lowest point since the TOP500 list was created in 1993.
• China is also carving out a bigger share as a manufacturer of high performance computers with multiple Chinese manufacturers becoming more active in this field.
• At number 2 spot is Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Titan, the top system in the US and one of the most energy-efficient systems, achieved a speed of 17.59 petaflop/s.
• Six of the Top 10 systems were installed in 2011 or 2012; Tianhe-2 in 2013 and only Trinity, Hazel-Hen, and Shaheen II in Saudi Arabia were installed in 2015.
• The low level of turnover among the top supercomputers reflects a slowing trend that began in 2008.

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