China has built the fastest supercomputer in the world.

China has developed a new supercomputer Tianhe-2, which is almost twice as fast as the current fastest supercomputer. The Tianhe-2 supercomputer which is nicknamed Milkyway-2 operates as fast as 30.7 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations) per second according to University of Tennessee professor Jack Dongara.

This is almost twice the speed of the U. S. Department of Energy’s fastest supercomputer, Titan, which operates at a ‘mere’ 17.6 petaflops per second.

The new supercomputer, Tianhe-2, was unveiled by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) during a conference held in late May. It is expected that the new Chinese supercomputer will provide an open, high-performance computing service for southwest China when it moves to the Chinese National Supercomputer Centre in Guangzhou by the end of this year.

NUDT has listed possible uses for the Tianhe-2 including aiding in government security, processing big data, simulations for testing airplanes etc.

It is expected that after testing, the Tianhe-2 would likely top the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list, which is expected to be unveiled during the International Supercomputing Conference next weekend. This would wrestle the supercomputer prize from the United States which it just gained last November.

This could also see China top the list twice in four years after it topped the list in 2010 with the Tianhe-1.

Imagine that speed! Eeerm, Nigeria, where are we?

Posted in Gadgets, science