For the sixth consecutive time, Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and running at the Guangzhou Supercomputing Center has defended its position as the world’s fastest supercomputer, according TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers released earlier this month. It has 16000 nodes with a total of 48000 Intel Phi accelerator boards.

Horst Simon, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, who had visited NAOC once in 2012, California, said in an interview with China Daily why Tianhe-2 keeps holding the top spot: “It is an exceptional system that is ahead of its competition and is mainly powered by Chinese technology,” He noted that Lenovo, Sugon and Inspur are the Chinese companies provide the technology. (See the news in China Daily)

It should be noted though that the processor technology used in Tianhe-2 for both the CPU and the accelerators is from Intel, which is a US company. (Rainer Spurzem)

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