Domestically produced supercomputer Taiwania 2 is the world’s 20th-most powerful computer according to the TOP500 List, a significant improvement from the original Taiwania’s ranking last year, the Ministry of Science and Technology said yesterday.
It is the best ranking that a Taiwanese supercomputer has ever captured, marking a milestone for the nation’s technological progress, the ministry said in a news release.
The supercomputer is expected to become operational in the first half of next year, it said, adding that it would be offered for use in government-managed robotics, autonomous vehicle experiments, artificial intelligence research and private innovative industries.
Photo: CNA
Installed at the ministry’s Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung, Taiwania 2 is part of a cloud computing platform built by the ministry’s National Center for High-Performance Computing, Quanta Computer Inc, Asustek Computer Inc and Taiwan Fixed Network Co, the ministry said.
Quanta is mainly responsible for Taiwania 2’s computing nodes, while Asustek aids with its cloud service system and Taiwan Fixed Network maintains its information security, the center’s Infrastructure Service Division deputy director Lu Hung-fu (盧鴻復) said.
It is part of the Executive Yuan’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program and has been allocated funding of NT$5 billion (US$161.8 million) over four years, starting from last year, Lu said.
Taiwania 2 has a computing capacity of 9 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (9 petaFLOPS) and is also energy-efficient, capturing 10th place on the Green500 List, he said.
The ranking shows Taiwan’s leap in high-performance computing, as the supercomputer’s predecessor, Taiwania, was ranked 95th on last year’s TOP500 List, Lu said.
The US claimed five of the top 10 spots, with its Summit and Sierra supercomputers taking first and second, followed by China’s Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2A systems in third and fourth respectively, the TOP500 List’s Web site showed.
The list is complied by Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee and Martin Meuer, cochair of the International Supercomputing Conference, who in 2014 took over as coauthor from his father, Hans Meuer, according to the TOP500 List.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai