China is expected to claim the world's fastest computer by November, surpassing the current industry leader - the Cray Jaguar supercomputer owned by the U.S. Department of Energy at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Steven Koonin, the undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy, told a conference of top computer experts gathered this week in Chattanooga that China's Nebulae supercomputer, which recently moved from the No. 5 to the No. 2 fastest computer in the world, could move to No. 1 by year's end.
"Some who worry about American competitiveness may say, "Well, that's OK because they are just building it with U.S. components," Dr. Koonin said, noting that the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen is supported by Intel and Nvidia chips, both developed in California's Silicon Valley.
"But there is a (nearly as fast) indigenous machine in the works in China and the relative slopes of the pace of innovation in the U.S. and China is somewhat disconcerting," he said.
Dr. Koonin was the keynote speaker today to kickoff the gathering of 350 scientists this week in Chattanooga for the annual conference of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Program.
For complete details, see tomorrow's Times Free Press.