China · California · Germany · The Guardian Technology
Last year the EU revealed a €20bn (£17bn) plan to build sites equipped with vast supercomputers to develop the next
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The AI “gigafactories” will target “moonshot” innovations in areas such as healthcare, biotech, industry, robotics and scientific discovery.
Key facts
- Last year the EU revealed a €20bn (£17bn) plan to build sites equipped with vast supercomputers to develop the next generation of AI models, as Europe attempts to catch leaders in the US and China
- The best-performing AI factories have supercomputers equipped with up to 25,000 advanced AI processors, but a gigafactory would exceed 100,000 AI processors, the EU strategy document said
- Scientists involved in the Top500 project said LineShine at China’s National Supercomputing Center achieved 2.198 exaflops, meaning it can perform more than 2 quintillion calculations per second
- The University of Bristol’s Isambard-AI is highest ranked of that group at 11, down two places since the last ranking
Summary
A supercomputer in China now outranks its US counterparts as the world’s most powerful. The LineShine computer in Shenzhen displaced top-ranked US computer El Capitan in the Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. China’s LineShine differs from other high-performance computers in that it runs entirely on conventional computer chips (CPUs), instead of the graphics processors (GPUs), commonly used for AI. Supercomputers, which are more than 1,000 times faster than a regular computer, can be used to hunt for medical breakthroughs, model climate systems, simulate nuclear explosions, predict human behaviour and perform virtual weapons testing. Scientists involved in the Top500 project said LineShine at China’s National Supercomputing Center achieved 2.198 exaflops, meaning it can perform more than 2 quintillion calculations per second.