China surpassed the US in the supercomputer race

This Asian country now has more supercomputers than the US, calculated on the list of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world.

On Top500's supercomputing list, China owns 202 systems, while the US owns only 143. This is the lowest rank of the US since the Top500 was born 25 years ago, even though they still managed to stand in 2nd place.

Japan is ranked third with 35 supercomputers, fourth is Germany with 20 systems.

See also: Intel challenged IBM and Google with supercomputers with temperatures 250 times cooler than the universe

According to Top500, China tried to turn the flag pretty fast when only 6 months ago, the US led with 169 systems and China followed closely with 160 machines.

How fast is supercomputer?

Supercomputers are capable of processing and computing speed much faster than conventional computers. They are used for many purposes such as weather forecasting, nuclear weapons simulation, and even monitoring extraterrestrial activity.

The supercomputer processing speed is measured by the number of floating points per second, called the flop. One petaflop equals one trillion billion flop. The world's fastest supercomputer, China's Sunway TaihuLight can reach 93 petaflops, twice as fast as the second supercomputer, also a Chinese product.

The world's 5 fastest supercomputers follow the list of Top500

The United States ranked fifth with Titan, owning 17.6 petaflops.

See also: The fastest supercomputers in the world