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List of top supercomputers dominated by China

(Download Image) Lawrence Livermore's Sequoia, a 20 petaflop/s (quadrillion operations per second) IBM Blue gene Q system, is No. 4 on the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

DOE laboratories, including LLNL, home to four of the top 10 most powerful supercomputers

The latest Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is dominated by China. The new edition of the list was released Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC16) in Frankfurt, Germany.

China now has the two top-ranked systems on the list and, for the first time, has more high performance computing systems in the Top500 than the United States. LLNL’s Sequoia, a 20 petaflop/s (quadrillion operations per second) IBM Blue gene Q system, dropped to No. 4, just below Titan, the 27 petaflop/s Cray XK7 system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Sunway TaihuLight is the new No. 1 system with 93 petaflop/s on the industry standard LINPACK benchmark. Developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Sunway TaihuLight displaces Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that has claimed the No. 1 spot on the past six TOP500 lists.

However, unlike the Tianhe-2, which uses Intel processors, the Sunway TaihuLight system is built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

The latest list marks the first time since the inception of the TOP500 in 1993 that the U.S. is not home to the largest number of supercomputing systems. With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the last few years, China leads with 167 systems and the U.S. is second with 165.

DOE/NNSA has four systems in the top 10 of the Top500: Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan, ranked No. 3; Argonne National Laboratory’s Mira, ranked No. 6; and Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories’ Trinity, ranked No. 7. LLNL’s 5 petaflop/s Vulcan, an IBM Blue Gene Q system, dropped from No. 12 to No. 14 on the list.

Delivery of the next advanced technology system to Livermore – IBM’s Sierra – is expected to begin in late 2017 with full deployment in 2018. Sierra, which is expected to clock approximately 150 petaflop/s, is being acquired under the tri-lab Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore (CORAL). Oak Ridge and Argonne also are receiving advanced supercomputer systems.

For more, see the Top500 list.