America’s new supercomputer beats China’s fastest machine to take title of world’s most powerful

http://azenglishnews.com/ ^ | 6/9/18

[BBell]

America’s new supercomputer beats China’s fastest machine to take the title of world’s most powerful Summit is a stepping stone toward a world of exascale computing.

The winner: The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has taken the wraps off Summit, which boasts peak computing power of 200 petaflops, or 200 million billion calculations a second. That makes it a million times faster than your typical laptop.

The loser: China. Summit is 60 percent faster than the previous supercomputing leader, the Sunway TaihuLight based in the Chinese city of Wuxi. Consolation prize: China still boasted way more entries than the US in a list of the fastest 500 supercomputers published last year

AI smarts: Summit is the first supercomputer designed from the ground up to handle machine learning, neural networks, and other AI applications. Its many thousands of AI-optimized chips from Nvidia and IBM can handle demanding tasks, such as crunching through mountains of reports and medical images to help unearth hidden causes of disease.

Supersized: The machine’s 4,608 servers and associated gear fill the space of two tennis courts and weigh more than a large commercial aircraft.

Why this matters: Topping the supercomputing charts isn’t just a matter of national pride. The machines are widely used in industry and also for national security tasks, such as developing nuclear weapons. Lessons from Summit will also inform the push to create “exascale” computers capable of handling a billion billion calculations a second. These are expected to come online in the early 2020s. Continue Reading

[BBell]

Heads are rolling at Unit 61398 in China. Next year China will have one that looks suspiciously like ours.

[Zathras]

Nvida processors.
Maybe they are just using them to Bitcoin mine.

[Bob434]

[[That makes it a million times faster than your typical laptop.]]

Woohoo- now i can get information overload that much quicker

[Bob434]

[[Next year China will have one that looks suspiciously like ours. ]]

But the stickers will be different at least

[PIF]

Next year China will have one that looks suspiciously like ours.

—
But far faster ... since China has taken the lead in quantum computing, their next one will be a mega-fast quantum computer, unbreakable, uninterceptable communication will be its forte

[AnotherUnixGeek]

This kind of competition is great, and has always driven the US to greater technological heights.

[Parmy]

Yes! What is to keep the Chinese from hacking into this computer and then copying it.

[HangnJudge]

https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-launches-summit-supercomputer

ORNL Launches Summit Supercomputer
New 200-Petaflops System Debuts as America’s Top Supercomputer for Science

[IronJack]

The machine’s 4,608 servers and associated gear fill the space of two tennis courts and weigh more than a large commercial aircraft.

But mainframes are obsolete because they're huge and heavy and take a lot of power ...

[freedumb2003]

Want to overload it?

Ask it to explain women to men using AI heuristics.

[morphing libertarian]

we should have elected what’s her name. She would have given them one.

[aquila48]

Gee, I wonder who China copied when they had the fastest computer?

[SuperLuminal]

"[[That makes it a million times faster than your typical laptop.]]

Woohoo- now i can get information overload that much quicker"

Does this mean that we might have a computer soon that can actually run Windows-10 with speed and efficiency?

[virgil]

Yes! What is to keep the Chinese from hacking into this computer and then copying it.

Yep. What they can't get, they'll just steal.

[Waverunner]

Do not hold your breath, as you know Windows expands to fill all available processors with tasks designed to enhance your Windows experience.

[gibsonguy]

Gee, I wonder how the Chinese built the computer we just beat. Among the most under reported/not reported stories is the Missile Tech the Clinton’s gifted the Chicoms. They advanced their missile Tech a decade in months due to the Clinton’s and one of their biggest donors, the Loral Corp I believe it was.

[butlerweave]

I’m guessing China already has the plans ,LOL

[minnesota_bound]

Even today Windows can barely do 2 things at once. How many times have you tried opening a folder or file when say you have a video open or installing some small software program and Windows pauses or cannot open the file or folder?

200 million billion calculations a second
What software is installed and how do they get it to do stuff. Are there desktop icons like one for inaccurate weather forecasting? : )

[wally_bert]

Windows 11 will reduce it to 486 performance levels.

[I want the USA back]

Define fast. Accessing data? Time for executing instructions? Time for calculating PI to the 20 millionth decimal position? Time for balancing my checkbook?