US and China race for the fastest supercomputer

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http://www.dw.com/en/us-and-china-race-for-the-fastest-supercomputer/a-18628659

For the past two years, China has had the world's top supercomputer, Tianhe-2. But now US President Barack Obama wants his country to build an even better one by 2025. Is this just a race for prestige?

US and China race for the fastest supercomputer
Interview: Gabriel Domínguez
05.08.2015

President Obama recently issued an executive order calling for the US to build the world's most powerful computer by 2025.

The computer currently occupying the top spot, Tianhe-2, is located in Guangzhou, China. And, with a computing speed of 33.86 petaflop per second, it has been in the pole position since 2011. A petaflop is a measure of how fast a computer can perform - one petaflop per second is one thousand trillion operations, carried out in a second.

Obama, however, wants the US to build a machine that would be 30 times faster than the Chinese computer. It would be able to perform one quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second - a figure which is known as one exaflop - and aid the US in conducting scientific research and performing complex simulations.

Developing the world's fastest supercomputer also helps the US to pioneer new technology and retain the country's technological edge against foreign rivals like China.