China’s Tianhe-2 retains world’s most powerful supercomputer

China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer has retained its position as the world’s most powerful system for the sixth consecutive time. That’s according to a biannual Top500 list of supercomputers released Monday. Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, with a performance of petaflops per second, was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. It has held the title since June 2013. The Chinese system is almost twice as fast as the next on the list, Titan of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has a performance of petaflops per second. In fact, there has been no change among the ranking of the world’s top5 supercomputers since June 2013 in the latest edition of the closely watched list. According to the editor of the report, the top five computers are very powerful and expensive. And it will take perhaps another year before a new system enters the top five. The Top500 list is considered one of the most authoritative rankings of the world’s supercomputers. It is compiled on the basis of the machines’ performance on the Linpack benchmark by experts from the United States and Germany.