However, an area that is seeing no sign of slowing down is the rate at which supercomputers are being installed in the country to perform complex simulations and applications that aid scientific research in a variety of industry sectors, from predicting the weather and space exploration to aiding DNA sequencing. The number of supercomputers in the country has tripled in the last three years – in contrast to the number in the US which has declined.
The rise of the supercomputer is predominantly down to the shift in the country’s economy and business make-up. Whereas China was previously a manufacturing hub, first and foremost, there is now far more technical research and design work taking place, meaning China has shifted from a producer of products that are designed elsewhere to a product creator.
The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Tianhe-2, which was created by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is capable of performing 33.86 quadrillion calculations in one second, which is almost twice the speed of the world’s second most powerful supercomputer – the US energy department’s Titan.