America racing to build supercomputers with China

Two US 20-petaflop systems are scheduled to be completed in 2012. But ranked No. 1 on this year's Top500 list, is China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer.

>>> The world's fastest supercomputer

A 20-petaflop supercomputer system in the world. (Internet photo)

The United States is building two 20-petaflop supercomputers (1 petaflops = 1015 floating point calculations per second), many times more powerful than any supercomputer currently active, including supercomputers. Tianhe-1A 2.5 new Chinese petaflop . Expected next week, Tianhe-1A will officially be " crowned " as the fastest system in the world today.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) of the US is home to supercomputers that were the world's strongest system, Jaguar 1.75-petaflop. ORNL is building a 20-petaflop system, which includes accelerators. Mr. James Hack, director of the National Center for Computer Science at Oak Ridge, said the system will be available in 2012. In addition, no other details about the system are provided.

Another 20-petaflop system is being built for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) of the United States. The system was announced, expected to be ' present ' in the laboratory by the end of 2011 and will be produced in 2012.

As early as June 2012, it is possible that the LLNL's 20-petaflop system will be ready to be ranked in the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers (Top500), Mr. Don Johnston, spokesman for LLNL said.

Whether these new 20-petaflop systems become the world's leading systems, with the participation of China, the race to build supercomputing systems between countries is becoming More fierce competition.

Japan is still building many supercomputers, including a 10-petaflop system with the nickname " K computer" . It is being developed by Fujitsu for Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and will be ' born ' in 2012.