Posted 10.28.2010 at 11:16 am
20 Comments
The Tianhe-1A Supercomputer
NVIDIA
Earlier this week China unveiled the world’s fastest bullet train, and today it boasts the world’s fastest supercomputer. Unveiled earlier today, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer has set a new performance record at 2.507 petaflops via 7,168 NVIDIA GPUs and 14,336 CPUs, unseating the Cray XT5 Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Labs as the world record holder.
Tianhe-1A was designed by the National University of Defense Technology in China, but like the XT5 Jaguar it will be operated as an open access system for high-powered, large scale scientific computations. Costing $88 million, Tianhe-1A weighs 155 tons and consumes 4.04 megawatts of electricity.
Related Articles
 | China Launches First Moon Probe |
 | China Building Coastal Energy Lab to House World's Deepest-Rated Sub, Search For Undersea Energy |
 | China Plans World's Largest Solar Power Plant |
Tags
Technology, Clay Dillow, china, Jaguar supercomputer, petaflops, supercomputers, supercomputing, world recordWhere can China get that much power? Maybe from the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, which also reached maximum generating capacity this week. There’s no word if China plans to build a space elevator, perfect the cold fusion process, and win the World Series before the week is out, but we suspect the Chinese have people diligently working on it.
20 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
Technology
|
|
|
|
|
|
July 2013: The Future Of Flight
The incredible innovations, like drone swarms and perpetual flight, bringing aviation into the world of tomorrow. Plus: today's greatest sci-fi writers predict the future, the science behind the summer's biggest blockbusters, a Doctor Who-themed DIY 'bot, the organs you can do without, and much more.
.jpg)
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Technology
- Green Light For Plan To Build World's Tallest Building At Record Speed
- Why The U.S. Won't Dare Kill Edward Snowden With A Drone Strike
- U.S. Government Uses Early Knowledge Of Microsoft Bugs For Spying
- Congress Was Not Really Briefed On PRISM
- A Concise History Of The NSA's Online Spying Program PRISM
- Who's More Powerful, China Or The United States? [Infographic]
- Why Government Phone Spying Is Really About Big Data
- It's Now Legal For The Police To Collect DNA As Part Of Any Arrest
- Watch This Insane Helicopter-Bike Fly Around
- Designers Spruce Up The Government's Crappy PowerPoint
Most Emailed
Technology
- Nursing Home Tracks Residents' Every Move
- Researchers Can Now "Hear" The Exact Shape Of A Room
- Designers Make City Noise Actually Sound Good
- All Of America's Waterways On One Map [Infographic]
- The 6 Most Important Things We Learned From Edward Snowden's Guardian Q&A
- Stanford's Artificial Neural Network Is The Biggest Ever
- New DNA Fog Covers Crime-Scene Suspects With Evidence
- Meet NASA's Astronaut Class of 2013
- Meet NASA's Astronaut Class Of 2013
- Google Reveals Massive Iranian Phishing Scheme
Most Viewed
Technology
- Nursing Home Tracks Residents' Every Move
- Researchers Can Now "Hear" The Exact Shape Of A Room
- Designers Make City Noise Actually Sound Good
- All Of America's Waterways On One Map [Infographic]
- The 6 Most Important Things We Learned From Edward Snowden's Guardian Q&A
- Stanford's Artificial Neural Network Is The Biggest Ever
- New DNA Fog Covers Crime-Scene Suspects With Evidence
- Meet NASA's Astronaut Class of 2013
- Meet NASA's Astronaut Class Of 2013
- Google Reveals Massive Iranian Phishing Scheme
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
.JPG)
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
My internal HD has more flops than that. Foolish humans...
I've been saying for a while now that "Everything happens faster in China." is the new "Everything's bigger in Texas.".
Er, make that my internal processors, not HD. With such speedy computational power, sometimes my motor functions cannot keep up.
Peta what? How about Peta Wilson? :)
It's so beautiful :}..
Too bad it will probably just be used to launch cyber attacks or filter everything fun and interesting from the internet
By next April or so it ought to be available in a candy-apple red notebook model.
While most Americans are more concerned about who is going to the superbowl, or who Britney Spears is sleeping with this week, the Chinese are quietly marching forward.
Proofread much?
Ooooh! Who is Britney sleeping with this week????
Chinese are doing what now?
I'm pretty sure the US Gov. has one that is far superior somewhere that it won't talk about.
With all those GPUs it sound like they have the ultimate video-gaming machine on their hands! Perhaps the Chinese universities have put together the world's biggest Starcraft server.
buckrodgers
With this power consumption China will have created a new global warming issue for Al Gore and company. What if all the worlds's super computers were interfaced. COLLOSSUS the Forbin project is here!!! or Maybe it will just say "Good morning Dave"
or a quantum computer :)
Manned mission to space, host of Olympic games, fastest bullet train, fastest super computer, yet they claim to be a developing country in need of foreign aid to the amount of 2.5 billion. They receive more foreign aid than Ethiopia!
Japan sends them 1.2 billion and US send 68 million, so why are we paying China to surpass us? Is it me or is this new breed of stupid? Instead of sending them foreign aid we should be using that money to pay off our debts, some of which are owned by China.
Another article said it this way, "It's almost as if Japan (Or the U.S.) gives aid money to China, but then finances this charity by taking a loan from China, then paying interest to China on the charity it provided... to China. (http://www.businessinsider.com/china-just-became-the-worlds-second-most-powerful-economy-but-its-still-receiving-25-billion-in-foreign-aid-2010-9#ixzz13jk1vZUh)
First one to tell me why they will continue to surpass us economically and scientifically gets a gold star. Clearly they have the world duped into paying them to leave us all in the dust.
Or maybe it's just me reading too much into it.
china is not going to surpass the USA anytime soon. 95% of the population is in poverty. and they have plenty of rights taken away from them. Its really just about numbers. they have over 4 times the population as the USA. They have 4 times the chance of finding smarter people. Yeah they beat us in numbers here and there, but they have a long way to go before I would want to live there. America may be a sinking ship, but its going to take 50 or 100 years before anyone truly unseats the USA. not to mention I am sure if we wanted to we could take over china in about 1 week without them even knowing it. But then they would take to the mountains and we would never win. what I am saying, is that their are some bright apples in china doing some great stuff. but there are about 100 times the rotten apples. making lead toys, poison dumplings, collapsing mines due to ZERO regulations.
It copies bootleg DVD's & video games at lightening speed! look out ebay!
They is just a momentary blip here. This is by no means an indication of the future domination in computing. Especially considering it's built using US processor chips. The US is still way out ahead of China in supercomputers and will show it in 2011 which is when IBM plans to start up their 20+ petaflop supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Lab. called Sequoia. If this is the best they can do today then it's going to take them some serious time to catch up to the US still.
Goodbye US!!! You've lost the war.
@Quatra
What war? The US is about to power up a super computer that's 10 times as powerful as this one (20 peta-flops)