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China Overtakes US In Latest Top 500 Supercomputer List (enterprisecloudnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-sheriff-in-town dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Enterprise Cloud News: The release of the semiannual Top 500 Supercomputer List is a chance to gauge the who's who of countries that are pushing the boundaries of high-performance computing. The most recent list, released Monday, shows that China is now in a class by itself. China now claims 202 systems within the Top 500, while the United States -- once the dominant player -- tumbles to second place with 143 systems represented on the list. Only a few months ago, the U.S. had 169 systems within the Top 500 compared to China's 160. The growth of China and the decline of the United States within the Top 500 has prompted the U.S. Department of Energy to doll out $258 million in grants to several tech companies to develop exascale systems, the next great leap in HPC. These systems can handle a billion billion calculations a second, or 1 exaflop. However, even as these physical machines grow more and more powerful, a good portion of supercomputing power is moving to the cloud, where it can be accessed by more researchers and scientists, making the technology more democratic.

3 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Not just super computing... by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are also planning on becoming #1 in quantum computing, radio astronomy, and plans in the work to build the next huge super collider. Meanwhile, in the USA, we are planning on giving rich trust-fund babies even more money they didn't earn, cutting back on our education, and appointing people who hate science to run science-based federal departments.

    1. Re:Not just super computing... by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They are also planning on becoming #1 [in many fields] Meanwhile, in the USA, we are planning on giving rich trust-fund babies even more money they didn't earn

      The rich spend boat-loads of money convincing the population that trickle-down either works, or would work if we reach a sufficient level of tax breaks and deregulation. So far this bribery, I mean investment, appears to be paying off because at least half the country accepts it.

      I do fear a slippery slope: the richer the rich get the more they spend on convincing the population that their own well-being depends on fat cats staying fat, given them even more power to get more power. The ever growing inequality since around 1980 is evidence of a slippery slope, or at least a trend somehow "stuck" going up.

      The idea of "corporate personhood" is not in the Constitution, but has slowly worked its way into common law by judges placed there by the rich. Some aspects of corporate personhood do have legal value in terms of deciding how to apply existing laws to corporations, but it's been way overdone.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Re:You will bankrupt yourselves trying to keep up. by boudie2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    USA have secret weapon. Donald J. Trump. Your MIPS supercomputer will be no help.