Humanity hasn't yet reached Mars, a cure for all diseases hasn't been invented, and cars don't fly. However, there are areas in which humans have achieved unprecedented heights. Computing power is one of them.
First, let's understand the key parameter when evaluating this supercomputer characteristic. Flops is a unit of measurement indicating the number of floating-point operations a computer can perform per second. This metric was used to compile our ranking of the world's most powerful computers, based on 2019 data.
The ranking was presented at the International Supercomputing Conference, and the top 500 supercomputers were compiled by mathematicians from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.
10. Trinity
This supercomputer guards US military security, maintaining the effectiveness of the national nuclear arsenal. Given this, one might think that this machine is incredibly expensive, but since 2015, it has been supplanted by newer, more powerful supercomputers. Trinity is based on the Cray XC40 system, and its performance is 8.1 petaflops/sec.
9. Mira
Mira is another brilliant product from Cray. It's worth noting that this supercomputer was developed for the US Department of Energy. Mira's primary application is government industrial and research projects. Its computing power is 8.6 petaflops per second.
8. K Computer
The uniqueness of this supercomputer lies in its name, which comes from the Japanese word "kei," meaning 10 quadrillion. The K Computer's performance is roughly around this figure: 10.5 petaflops. A unique feature of this technology is its use of liquid cooling, which significantly reduces power consumption and reduces the speed of assembly.
7. Oakforest-Pacs
The Japanese company Fujitsu, which also developed the previously mentioned K Computer, has created a next-generation supercomputer (the Knights Landing generation). The project was commissioned by the University of Tokyo and the University of Tsukuba. Although the initial plan was to equip the computer with 900 terabytes of memory and a performance of 25 quadrillion operations, its computing power now stands at 13.6 petaflops/s.
6. Cory
Until 2017, Cori held a solid fifth place in the world rankings of the most powerful computers, but with rapidly advancing technological progress, it has lost one spot to the latest supercomputers. It is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States. Cori has already made a unique contribution to science: with its help, Swiss scientists managed to simulate a 45-qubit quantum computing system. This "supermachine" has a performance capacity of 14 petaflops.
5. Sequoia
Many experts call Sequoia the fastest supercomputer in the world, and for good reason: its arithmetic performance is equivalent to the work of 6.7 billion people performing the same task using calculators for 320 years. Sequoia is also notable for its size: the computer occupies 390 square meters and consists of 96 racks. Its performance is 17.2 petaflops, which equates to almost sixteen thousand trillion operations.
4. Titan
In addition to being among the fastest computers in the world, Titan is also considered one of the most energy-efficient, boasting a power consumption rating of 2,142.77 megaflops per watt. The secret to its energy savings lies in the use of Nvidia accelerators, which deliver up to 901 TP3T of total computing power, or 17.6 petaflops. Thanks to these accelerators, Titan has significantly reduced its footprint—it now requires only 404 square meters.
3. Piz Daint
The Piz Daint supercomputer project was launched back in 2013 in Lugano, Switzerland. It is also located there, at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center. Piz Daint combines nearly all the positive characteristics of the aforementioned supercomputers, including energy efficiency and high speed, with the added benefit of being compact: the device consists of 28 large racks. Its computing power is 19.6 petaflops.
2. Tianhe-2
The supercomputer with the romantic name "Milky Way" (translated from Chinese) topped the list of the world's 500 most powerful computers until June 2016. Its performance delivers a speed of 2507 trillion operations per second, equivalent to 33.9 petaflops. Tianhe-2 found its calling in construction, calculating developments and road layouts. It's worth noting that since its release in early 2013, "Milky Way" has consistently held the top spot in the rankings, a truly impressive feat.
1. Sunway TaihuLight
This computer contains 40,960 high-performance processors, which explains its size: Sunway itself occupies approximately 1,000 square meters. In 2016, at an international conference in Germany, it was recognized as the fastest of its kind. Today, Sunway TaihuLight is the first in the ranking and the only supercomputer in the top 10 capable of achieving a speed of 93 petaflops.
