The most recent edition of TOP500's largest supercomputers list was updated on June 20, 2016 at the International Supercomputer Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Chinese-developed supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight disrupted the order by taking first place for world's biggest supercomputer. It replaced another Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2).
One of the differences between the two Chinese supercomputers is the Sunway TaihuLight is made with all Chinese parts, whereas the Tianhe-2 has the American brand Intel inside it. The Sunway TaihuLight even runs on its own operating system called Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5. For an overview of the specs and usages of the top five supercomputers in the world, continue reading:
The Sunway TaihuLight has 93 petaflop/s on the LINPACK benchmark. This supercomputer was developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC). It was installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, an old city in China that's close to Shanghai. This supercomputing center was unveiled on the same day the TaihuLight took the top spot on TOP500's largest supercomputers list. The Sunway TaihuLight has 10,649,600 computing cores; 40,960 nodes; and a peak power consumption of 15.371 MW. This supercomputer is being used for research, engineering, oil prospecting, and life sciences.
The Tianhe-2 was in first place on the last six TOP500 supercomputers lists but was recently bumped into second place by the Sunway TaihuLight. When it comes to peak power consumption, however, the Tianhe-2 outperforms the TaihuLight with 17.808 MW. This supercomputer has 3,120,000 cores, Intel Xeon E5-2692 12C 2.200 GHz, Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P, and TH Express-2. It is housed at the National Supercomputer Center in port city Guangzhou, China.
Developed by 1,300 scientists and engineers, the Tianhe-2 is now being used for government security applications, analysis, and simulation. There were plans in 2015 for the Sun Yat-sen University to collaborate with the Guangzhou district and city administration to double its computing capabilities, but the United States declined their Intel application for an export license for the coprocessor boards and CPUs.
Coming in third place is the Titan from the Unites States, housed in the DOE/SC/Oak Ridge National Laboratory where it is used for research and science projects. It was an upgrade from the Jaguar, which was previously stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Titan was built by Cray Inc., a supercomputer manufacturer in Seattle, Washington. Its specs include Opteron 6274 16C 2.2000 GHz, NVIDIA K20x, Cray Gemini interconnect, and Cray XK7. The Titan also has 560,640 cores and runs at a peak power consumption of 8.209 MW.
Sequoia, a supercomputer built by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration, houses BlueGene/Q and Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz. It has 1,572,864 cores and 7.890 MW peak power consumption. The Sequoia supercomputer is installed at the DOE/NNSA/LLNL. It is being used for research, nuclear weapons, astronomy, climate change, energy, and the human genome. This supercomputer was sent to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011 and was fully deployed by June 2012. In 2012, Sequoia had replaced the K Computer as the world's fastest supercomputer but has since fallen into third place.
The K Computer is located at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Japan. It has a SPARC64 VIIIfx 2.0 GHz and Tofu interconnect with a peak power consumption of 12.660 MW and 705,024 cores. The K Computer is being used for earthquake and tsunami research, space science, weather forecasting, drug discovery, and manufacturing and material development. This supercomputer runs fast and is easy to use.
Researchers around the world are allowed to access the K Computer for research as well. Many scientists and technical researchers from universities, institutes, and industries take advantage of this generous opportunity. Developers continue to create more software for the K Computer, allowing its uses to increase. Another interesting feature of the K Computer is it was designed to continue operating even when one of its parts malfunctions, enabling researchers to continue calculations while they replace the part.
The Sunway TaihuLight, Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2), Titan, Sequoia, and the K Computer are the world's top five biggest supercomputers. If you're a researcher, you have the chance to use the K Computer for your research. Each of these supercomputers is utilized in multifarious ways, particularly for research and scientific innovation.
