The US may once again have the fastest supercomputer in the world, NPR reports.
The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory unveiled its Summit supercomputer last week, which it says has a peak performance of 200 petaflops, or two hundred thousand trillion calculations per second, NPR adds. This, the Verge notes, is more than double the capability of China's Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, which last held the top spot.
The TaihuLight took the top position on the Top500 ranking of supercomputers in 2016 and kept its lead last year. In 2017, China's Tianhe-2 and the Swiss Piz Daint system rounded out the top three. Though the US had five supercomputers in the top 10, 2017 was the first year since 1996 that it didn't have any in the top three.
But this is expected to change with Summit, according to the Top500. However, it hasn't yet been recognized as the fastest supercomputer in the world, as the new rankings aren't yet out — they are due in a few weeks.
The Verge adds that if Summit claims that top spot, it isn't expected to hold on to it too long. ORNL is working on Frontier, which is expected to have a peak performance of 1 exaflop, it says.