BEIJING. China has the world's most powerful supercomputer for the third consecutive time. "Tianhe-2" was declared No. 1 for the first half of 2014 in the list of the 500 fastest computers in the world. The relevant "Top 500" list is updated twice a year. Since the last time, China has 20% more supercomputers in the "Top 500", while the United States has 15% fewer. Nevertheless, the United States continues to be the dominant power with 233 computers among the 500 most powerful internationally, compared to 76 for China, 30 for Britain, 27 for France and 23 for Germany.
The full list of the Top 500, which began in 1993 and is a "barometer" for the computing power of each state, will be published next Monday in Leipzig, Germany, according to the BBC. The champion "Tianhe-2", which belongs to the Chinese government and is installed at the National University of Defense Technology, used for research and education purposes, has a processing power of 33.86 petaflop/s (quadruple million calculations per second). The one petaflop barrier was broken five years ago by the supercomputer Roadrunner of the American company IBM, which in 2013 "retired" due to excessive electricity consumption. All together, the machines of the "Top 500" have a processing power of about 274 petaflops per second.
However, not all supercomputers are used for research or educational purposes. Earlier this month, a scientist was found in the US using the National Science Foundation's supercomputers to mine bitcoins at two universities. It was even estimated that the value of bitcoins produced by the supercomputers was over $8,000. The researcher was immediately suspended, although he claimed that he was conducting some tests. The supercomputers, funded by the government organization and costing $150,000, were used to mine the digital currency. The two universities where the cases were recorded were not named. According to the authorities, the scientist probably used software that can be operated remotely and then tried to hide his tracks. A similar incident occurred in February at Harvard University, when a researcher was arrested on charges of mining a bitcoin derivative called dogecoin. In this case, the perpetrator had used the Odyssey computer network at Boston University.
Source: kathimerini.gr
