Sunway TaihuLight – the world’s most powerful computer

Every state would like to be the best one when it comes to technology, so there is a pretty close competition going on at all times between China, the USA, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and another few countries. It seems that the last round was won by China when they built the Sunway TaihuLight, which is currently the most powerful computer in the world. The previous computer that held this record was also a Chinese one, the Tianhe-2, but the latest supercomputer is three times as efficient as the Tianhe-2. According to Wired, the current record holder is not only more efficient than the previous supercomputer, it’s also twice as fast, being able to perform up to 93000 trillion calculations per second, or 93 petaflops. Now, that is truly an amazing achievement for the Chinese, and it would be for anyone in the world.

As you might expect, this supercomputer comes at a huge cost, but it might be worth every cent of the investment since it can prove to be extremely useful when it comes to sensitive tasks, like designing nuclear weapons, discovering new and complicated medical drugs, and even for airplane aerodynamics simulation. According to sources, the design and build of this supercomputer cost approximately $270 million, making it probably not only the most powerful computer in the world but also the most expensive. Currently, the world’s most powerful supercomputer can be found in Wuxi, at the National Supercomputing Centre.

Given the speed at which technology evolves every year, it’s safe to assume that the Sunway TaihuLight won’t keep its title for a very long time. We will more than likely see even more amazing supercomputers in the more or less near future. Who knows, maybe next time some other country will be able to dethrone China, the state that currently holds the first two places of the Top500 with its supercomputers.