The new generation supercomputer Tianhe Xingyi was unveiled on December 6, outperforming the renowned Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which held the title of the fastest in the world for many years.
The National Supercomputing Center (NSC) in Guangzhou, China, introduced Tianhe Xingyi, a domestic supercomputer, at an event in Guangdong Province, according to Interesting Engineering. The NSC was also the organization that guided the development of Tianhe-2.
The Tianhe Xingyi supercomputer surpasses the Tianhe-2 in many aspects. (Photo: CFG)
Tianhe Xingyi is built based on domestic designs. Although the exact specifications of this supercomputer have not been disclosed, the director of NSC, Lu Yutong, stated that the latest supercomputer outperforms Tianhe-2 in many areas such as computing power, connection efficiency, storage capacity, and application performance. This achievement places Tianhe Xingyi among the top 10 independently developed supercomputers in the world, without reliance on American technology. China is focusing on developing processors such as Loongson and the necessary connections to manufacture supercomputers.
Supercomputers play an essential role in the development of a country by helping to address the most complex engineering problems. The U.S. has traditionally led the world with the fastest supercomputers in the TOP500 list. The high computing capacity of supercomputers can be used for simulations to better understand climate change, material research, space exploration, and finding cures for various diseases. Recently, supercomputers have played a crucial role in developing AI models.
China’s efforts to develop supercomputers began in the 1980s, and it took the country two decades to achieve significant milestones. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, China gained global attention for developing the Tianhe-1 supercomputer. Three years later, under the guidance of the NSC, the National University of Defense Technology introduced the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which topped the TOP500 list.
Tianhe-2 continued to hold its position for the next three years. While it may lose its top spot now, it still remains among the top 10 supercomputers in the world. In 2019, China had 228 supercomputers on the TOP500 list, surpassing the U.S. Currently, they are also developing a supercomputer capable of performing one quintillion calculations per second.
