Who would have thought that the US would be bumped from the Top 3 spots when it comes to supercomputers? The US has held their place at the top for a long time, and the last time they fell out of the top three was in 1996. This year, an upgrade to the Swiss supercomputer will likely keep the US on the outside looking in.
While the US has moved down to the fourth slot with 17.6 petaflops, the Chinese supercomputers have secured the top two slots. Furthermore, Swiss has proved that, not only do they brew good cheese and milk, but great brains too.
Few facts about the Swiss Supercomputer
The Swiss Piz Daint system that has displaced the US machine, is currently installed at Switzerland's National Supercomputer Center. Before the new upgrade was made, the Swiss machine had a performance of 9.8 petaflops, where petaflops is a unit used to measure the performance of a machine and one petaflop equals one trillion operations per second. In the meantime, the US machine showcased a performance of 17.59 petaflops. After the upgradations to the Swiss supercomputer, the performance boosted to a more than 25 petaflops.
It is of great interest to notice that the new machine received its name after a peak in the Grison region of Switzerland.
The US machine
Even though the US lost its place from the top three slots, it still continues to hold its head high by conquering half the number of slots among the top 10 supercomputers.
The US hasn't lost their might, as they strive hard to secure their third slot back later this year, by introducing their best supercomputer online.
The machine is believed to have a maximal performance of more than 100 petaflops, that would topple the Swiss machine.
However, with more than 100 petaflops of performance, the machine won't be able to overthrow the Chinese machines that are far beyond reach.
The Chinese Brains
The Chinese machine that occupies the second slot offers a performance of 33.9 petaflops.
However, when compared to the Chinese machine rooted to the first slot, the performance is minimal.
The Chinese machine, The Sunway TaihuLight Machine, that majestically occupies the first slot is said to deserve the first position for the 93 petaflops of performance that it offers.
As the human brains continue to grow, gaining knowledge, the fight for the top three slots still continues. The Al Bridging Cloud, a Japanese machine that's still in the workshop, offers high hopes and is believed to be much more powerful than the Chinese machines. The Japanese machine once finished, would offer a performance of 130 petaflops, which would be a milestone in the world of supercomputers.
