China Dominates List of Top Supercomputers

China has overtaken the US to have the most supercomputers in the list of the world’s fastest 500 systems. The country accounted for 202 of the globe’s highest performance machines, according to the latest Top500 survey, BBC reported. By contrast, the US had 143. That marks its lowest level since the bi-annual study began, 25 years ago, but still secured it second place. Japan was placed third with 35 systems, and Germany fourth with 20. In the previous survey, published in June, the US still had a lead of 169 supercomputers to China’s 160. The reversal of fortunes reflects China’s increased investment in research and development - according to a recent study, the country now accounts for about 20% of the world’s total R&D expenditure. Performance is measured in petaflops (one thousand trillion floating point operations per second). A flop can be thought of as a step in a calculation. China’s fastest computer - the Sunway TaihuLight - maintained its lead as the world’s speediest, performing at 93 petaflops. By contrast, the US’s fastest - Titan - ranks fifth in the world, with a maximum performance of 17.6 petaflops.