3. Tianhe-2 (China) – $390 million
As mentioned above, China’s Tianhe-2 (translated to “Milky Way-2” in English) is the world’s fastest current supercomputer. Tianhe-2 was developed by a team of 1,300 scientists and engineers, and it is located in National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. Since 2013 it has consecutively ranked #1 on TOP500’s list of fastest supercomputers. Tianhe-2 was sponsored by the 863 High Technology Program, and was initiated by the Chinese government and the government of Guangzhou province.
It was built by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) after the US government rejected Intel’s application for an export license for the CPUs and coprocessor boards. This move by the US was a blow to Intel and their suppliers, and a drag to US information technology development, while also being a boost for China’s own processor-development industry.
Tianhe-2 is able to perform 33,860 trillion calculations per second. One hour of these calculations by the supercomputer is the equivalent of 1,000 years of difficult sums by 1.3 billion people. As unfathomable as that number is, the future only grows brighter for information technology. Tianhe-2 is used for simulation, analysis, and government security applications.
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