Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer

Interestingly this is the first time USA doesnt have the most computers in the top 500, china is leading now 202 > 143. I don't know if its the 'Trump effect' (i.e. science is not important) but considering just 6 months ago the USA had more than China I wouldnt be surprised if its playing a part

 

No, in terms of both number of systems and performance of all systems combined (on top500 at least), China surpassed the US on June 2016. It just continues the trend of Chinese rise and the US's decline on the number of supercomputers.

However, one important factor is that top500 is based on LINPACK, which is a relatively easy benchmark. It can be seen as a "practical peak performance" of a supercomputer. The actual performance when doing some real world workloads can be vastly lower than that. For example, the HPCG benchmark, which contains broader types of operations typical for a supercomputer, shows a different picture of performance characteristics of these supercomputers on the list (the current #1 on top500 is only #5 on HPCG's list). Although, as it's not as prominent as top500, supercomputer centers are probably less likely to spend much time optimizing for HPCG than for LINPACK, thus it depends on memory subsystem and interconnect much more than LINPACK does (though you can say that to many real world workloads anyway).

It'd be interesting to see how Summit does on HPCG's list though. I believe it'll be revealed soon.

 

you're right, 2016 june China 167 USA 165

 

I think total number in top 500 isn't that impressive without knowing the utilisation rates of each supercomputer.