A Chinese supercomputer has taken out first place on the list of the world’s fastest computers — the first China-based system to achieve this ranking in almost a decade. LineShine stands apart because it combines conventional computer processing with artificial-intelligence capabilities and represents the future of scientific computing, say researchers.
On Tuesday, LineShine, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, was placed first in the TOP500, which is published twice a year.
The computer is remarkable because it doesn’t use graphics processing units (GPUs), fast chips that can handle the concurrent calculations needed for AI computations. US companies have tended to lead advanced chip designs, but LineShine is made from Chinese parts, in part because the United States has restricted the export of its GPUs to China, citing national security concerns.
The machine’s power comes from combining sheer scale of components — made up of almost 14 million processing cores — with design innovations, including fast shuttling of data and specialized units that can perform some of the dense calculations that are performed by GPUs on other computers.
To read more, click here.