petaflops Archives - Oak Ridge Today

New Chinese supercomputer named world’s fastest; ORNL’s Titan drops to No. 3

Posted at 9:40 am June 20, 2016
By Oak Ridge Today Staff Leave a Comment

Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, which was the world’s fastest supercomputer in November 2012 but is now ranked No. 3. (File photo courtesy ORNL/October 2013)

China maintained its number one ranking in the latest edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers, but with a new system built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

China now has the top two supercomputers on the semiannual TOP500 list, and Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has dropped from number two to number three.

The new Chinese supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, is capable of 93 petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second, a press release said.

It displaced Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that had claimed the number one spot on the past six TOP500 lists. Tianhe-2 achieved a speed of 33.86 petaflops, or more than 33,000 trillion calculations per second, in a test known as the LINPACK benchmark.

Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory, achieved 17.59 petaflops.

Titan was the top system for a short time. It was number one in November 2012, but it was bumped to number two behind Tianhe-2 in June 2013. This is the first time it has been number three.

The latest list marks the first time since the start of the TOP500 that the United States is not home to the largest number of systems. With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the last few years, China leads with 167 systems and the U.S. is second with 165. China also leads the performance category, thanks to the number one and number two systems, the press release said. [Read more…]

Chinese supercomputer stays No. 1, Titan at ORNL still No. 2

Posted at 7:31 pm November 17, 2014
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, which was the world’s top supercomputer in November 2012 but is now ranked No. 2. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

For the fourth consecutive time, Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, has retained its position as the world’s number one system. Meanwhile, Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was the top supercomputer in November 2012, remains number two.

Tianhe-2 is capable of performing at 33.86 petaflops, or 33.86 quadrillions of calculations per second, on a benchmark test known as Linpack.

The rankings are from the 44th edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, which was announced Monday in Mannheim, Germany; Berkeley, California; and Knoxville. Tianhe-2 has been in the top spot four consecutive times, and Titan has been number two each time. [Read more…]

Chinese supercomputer bumps ORNL’s Titan from No. 1 spot

Posted at 12:32 pm June 17, 2013
By John Huotari 3 Comments

Lights on the Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which has a theoretical peak that is twice as fast as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Jack Dongarra)

A Chinese supercomputer has bumped the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from the No. 1 spot on a semiannual ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The Tianhe-2, which was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is capable of 33.86 petaflops, or more than 33,000 trillion calculations per second.

Now ranked No. 2, Titan was able to perform 17,000 trillion calculations per second, or 17.59 petaflops, according to the list published in November. [Read more…]

Theoretically twice as fast, Chinese supercomputer could bump Titan from No. 1 spot

Posted at 3:04 pm June 5, 2013
By John Huotari 15 Comments

Lights on the Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which has a theoretical peak that is twice as fast as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Jack Dongarra)

A new Chinese supercomputer is theoretically twice as fast as the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it could bump Titan from the No. 1 spot on the Top 500 list that will come out on June 17, one of the co-authors of the list said Wednesday.

Titan, which reached the No. 1 spot on the semiannual Top 500 list in November, has a theoretical peak of 27 petaflops, or roughly 27,000 trillion calculations per second.

The Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, also known as TH-2 or Milkyway-2, has a theoretical peak of 54.9 petaflops. It also has about twice as much memory as the Titan system, said Jack Dongarra, a Top 500 co-author, University of Tennessee faculty member, and distinguished research staff member in ORNL’s Computer Science and Mathematics Division. [Read more…]

Cray re-soldering Titan’s connectors, supercomputer testing could be done in April

Posted at 1:55 pm March 13, 2013
By John Huotari 11 Comments

Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, the world’s fastest supercomputer. (Photos courtesy of ORNL)

Hundreds of connectors are being re-soldered each week, and the Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory—the world’s fastest machine—could be in regular production by May, a lab official said Wednesday.

Jeff Nichols, ORNL associate lab director for computing and computational sciences, said connectors on the $100 million computer’s motherboards had too much gold, and solder was interacting with the gold on connector pins, making the solder unstable and leading to cracks.

There are about 20,000 of the pencil-sized connectors, which link central and graphic processing units, or CPUs and GPUs. Each connector has about 100 pins.

[Read more…]

World’s fastest supercomputer at ORNL more about research than rankings

Posted at 4:53 am November 13, 2012
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now ranked as the world’s fastest. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

The No. 1 ranking for the new Titan supercomputer, designating it as the most powerful in the world, was clearly appreciated in East Tennessee on Monday.

But even as they celebrated a return to the top spot, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where the giant computer is based, said they are focused more on research than rankings.

“We love being No. 1,” said Bronson Messer, acting group leader for scientific computing at the National Center for Computational Science at ORNL. “It’s great recognition. But what really matters is what science will do with the machine.”