TaihuLight - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

1)   Which is the world’s fastest supercomputer?

a. Sunway TaihuLight
b. Tianhe-2
c. Titan
d. Cori
Answer  Explanation 

ANSWER: Sunway TaihuLight

Explanation:
China’s Sunway TaihuLight was recently declared the world’s fastest supercomputer.

  • It was revealed in the latest edition of the semi-yearly TOP500 Supercomputer list released on 14th Nov 2016
  • This marks the 8th time in the row that a Chinese made computer has gained the first place in the list
  • This also marks the first time a Chinese-made supercomputer has won without the use of US processors or technology
  • TOP500 is considered an authoritative ranking of the supercomputers in the world; it is compiled on the basis of the machine’s performance on the Linpack benchmark by experts from US and Germany
  • An Intel based Chinese Tianhe-2 supercomputer is on the second position in the list and can perform calculations with processing speed of 33.86 Pflops
  • Currently US DOE/Department of Energy supercomputer Titan is in third place with a performance of 17.59 Pflops
  • IBM’s Sequoia supercomputer system installed at the US DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory grabbed the fourth position in the list
  • The Cori supercomputer is on the fifth position in the list
  • It is a new system installed at US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with a performance of 14.0 Pflops
  • Sunway TaihuLight is ranked as the third most energy efficient supercomputer in TOP500 with an efficiency of 6051.30 MFLOPS/W
  • The machine designed by the National Research Centre of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology is located at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi in Jiangsu province China
  • It is capable of performing 93 million billion calculations per second which is three times as fast as Tianhe-2 the second fastest supercomputer