In the race to build the fastest computer in the world, America is back on top. <\/p>\n
On Monday, a super-computer designed by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), took the first spot on the Top 500 list, a list that comes out twice a year ranking the 500 fastest computers on the planet. <\/p>\n
It is the first time the U.S. has topped the list since November 2009. <\/p>\n
The winning super-computer is called Sequoia, and it is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. <\/p>\n
Sequoia will be used to build complex models that let scientists test the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons without having to do nuclear testing in the real world. <\/p>\n
So how fast is the fastest computer in the world? Well, accordingto the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, it would take 6.7 billion people working with hand-held calculators 320 years to do the same calculation that Sequoia could power through in justone hour. <\/p>\n
And the BBC reports that today's fastest computer is 273,930 times faster than the fastest computer of 1993. <\/p>\n
\"A calculation that took three full days to compute on the Thinking Machines in 1993 today can be done in less than one second on the Sequoia,\" Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist who helps oversee the Top 500 list, told the publication. <\/p>\n
Sequoia takes up aboutone-tenth of an acre, a standard size for these computers, Dongarra said. <\/p>\n
\"They are enormous machines,\" he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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U.S. wins: Fastest supercomputer in world is right here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the race to build the fastest computer in the world, America is back on top. On Monday, a super-computer designed by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), took the first spot on the Top 500 list, a list that comes out twice a year ranking the 500 fastest computers on the planet. It is the first time the U.S. Continue reading