The twice-annual ranking of the world's fastest computers, announced Friday at a supercomputer industry conference in Baltimore, included two new entrants based on personal computers, including one cluster of machines running the Linux operating system.
The Top500 List, released by computer scientists based at the University of Tennessee and the University of Mannheim in Germany, was dominated by the Earth Simulator, made by the NEC Corp of Japan.
The Japanese machine shook up the computing world when its performance results were announced in April by Jack Dongarra, one of the computer scientists who, since 1993, have been tracking the speed of the world's fastest machines.
American scientists see the powerful Earth Simulator as evidence that the US has been spending disproportionately on computers that are primarily aimed at weapons research. Before the Japanese accomplishment this spring, the US had dominated the top computing spot for many years.
Despite the new Japanese dominance, seven of the world's fastest computers are installed in the US. France and Britain also have machines that are among the top 10.
In the new ranking, the ASCI Q supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico occupies the No. 2 and 3 positions, because of its segmented design. Additionally, two supercomputers based on IBM's Power4processor have joined the list.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day