Nvidia Powers World's Fastest Supercomputer with Over 7,000 GPUs
Oct 31, 2010
Supercomputing / Technology
Chipmaker Nvidia announced that a new supercomputer built in China, powered by over 7,000 of its graphics processor units (GPUs), is now the world's fastest. This supercomputer, constructed by the National University of Defense Technology and located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, has a processing power equivalent to 175,000 laptop computers, according to Nvidia officials. With sustained performance reaching 2.5 petaflops, this Chinese supercomputer, named Tianhe-1A, is 30% faster than the world's second most powerful supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, as per Nvidia's claims. The Tianhe-1A will serve scientists in various fields and will also be available for international use. Nvidia, known for its high-end video cards favored by gamers, is now promoting its technology for diverse applications beyond graphics, including supercomputers that run complex simulations in astrophysics and other computation-heavy tasks. Supercomputer