China unveils Tianhe supercomputer, 4th fastest ever

[Andreas G]

Now that China has unveiled its fastest supercomputer and even if it is not the fastest computer in the galaxy, it's named after it; Tianhe mean Milky Way. The supercomputer will reach a performance of 1.2 Petaflops and with a Linpack result of 563.1 Teraflops it would have climbed up to fourth place on the current Top500 list. The system weighs 155 ton and house no less than 103 refrigerator-sized cabinets in a 1000 square meter hall.

For comparison, National University of Defense Technology says, who built the system, that the job Tianhe can do in a day would take 160 years to do with a regular dual-core PC.

The performance is achieved by thousands of CPUs and GPUs where Intel supplies the Xeon processors while AMD supplies the graphics circuits. Among others you will find thousands of Radeon HD 4870X2 graphics cards that will be one of the most important steps to reaching this kind of performance. At the same time it contributes into creating a relatively energy efficient system.

Although its annual electricity bill can be as high as 18 million yuan, Tianhe could have been ranked the world's fifth greenest supercomputer, according to Green500 List in June, compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech aiming to provide a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and serve as a complementary view to the TOP500. 

When the system is completed NUDT is expected to upgrade the supercomputer with thousands of China-made CPUs that will push Linpack performance above 800 Teraflops.