Chinese 34 Petaflop Supercomputer Has Public Beta (Tianhe 2 Ahead Of Schedule And On Budget)

In April 2014, the Tianhe 2 supercomputer began offering computing power to public users while the system continues debugging and fine tuning. It has a peak processing speed of 33.86 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflops), derived from 16,000 computer nodes, while it has a theoretical peak processing power of 54.9 petaflops. The closest competitor is the Oak Ridge National Lab’s 17.59 petaflops Titan in America, which has only about half of the Tianhe 2′s computing power. Both supercomputers are open to public use for scientific research, including molecular scale physics, climate simulation and astronomic signal processing. Of course, the technology behind these supercomputers could also be used for military purposes, including nuclear weapons test simulations and decryption.

The Tianhe 2 went operational in December 2013, well ahead of its 2015 schedule, and reportedly costs only $390 million.

Tianhe 2 Corridor- A look down one of the corridors in the giant room housing the Tianhe 2, which has a processing power of 33.86 petaflops (double that of its nearest competitor, the Oak Ridge Lab’s Titan). Chinese Internet
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