May surpass China’s Tianhe-2 to become world’s fastest

The US Department of Energy has unveiled a $325 million investment program to work on two supercomputers, which analysts said Sunday may help the US regain the top position in a supercomputing arms race with China.

The two new supercomputers, named "Summit" and "Sierra" respectively, would be installed at the department's Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, according to a statement posted on the department's website Friday (US time). The Xinhua News Agency reported over the weekend that the installation of the two US supercomputers would be finished in 2017.

"High-performance computing is an essential component of the science and technology portfolio required to maintain US competitiveness and ensure our economic and national security," US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in the statement.

Upon the completion of the US project, China's Tianhe-2, or Milkyway-2, currently the world's fastest supercomputer developed by National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province, might lose its title in the near future.

The statement revealed that Sierra would be at least seven times as powerful as the US-made Sequoia, currently the world's third-fastest supercomputer which clocked a performance score of 17.17 quadrillion operations per second, and the Summit system is expected to be at least five times more powerful than US-made Titan, the world's second-fastest with a performance of 17.59 quadrillion operations per second.

This means that Summit would be at least three times more powerful than Tianhe-2, which provides a score of 33.86 quadrillion operations per second and has occupied the top position for the third consecutive list globally, according to the latest semi-annual supercomputer ranking released by global supercomputer list provider top500.org in June.

The November edition of the TOP500 List is scheduled to be announced in New Orleans on Tuesday.

Analysts said Sunday that leadership in high-performance computing can help a country promote its economic and national security, but this does not mean that China needs to spare no efforts to develop a faster one than its US counterpart.

Despite being surpassed by the US, China still can maintain a significant role in the high-performance computing sector with Tianhe-2, Zhang Yi, CEO with Shenzhen-based iiMedia Research, told the Global Times Sunday.

Tianhe-2 is powerful enough to support the country's present data processing in fields such as biological sciences, meteorology and national security, so there's no need for China to engage in neck-and-neck competition with the US, said Zhang.

According to media reports, Tianhe-2, installed in Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, has been used in the development of 973 national basic research programs, covering fields such as biological science, economics and energy science, since being available for usage this April.

But Xiang Ligang, CEO of industry information portal cctime.com, told the Global Times Sunday that the data collection and sharing system needs more improvements, and China also needs to install more supercomputers to fast-track the usage.

In the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers, the Chinese mainland claimed the No.2 spot with 76 supercomputers on the list, while the US is home to the most with 233. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan have one each on the list.