In this Aug. 8, 2014 photo Governor Rick Perry pauses as he addresses attendees at the 2014 Red State convention in Fort Worth, Texas. Two Texans, one White House. Is the 2016 Republican campaign trail big enough? After plummeting from a front-runner to political punchline three years ago, Governor Perry appears poised to run again _ hoping to convince conservatives he can better cope with the national spotlight. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)Not so fast, China. The United States just won back bragging rights in the global supercomputer race.
For the past five years, China has had the world’s fastest computer, a striking symbolic achievement that highlighted the nation’s ambitions and progress in high-tech.
But the United States has regained the lead thanks to a new supercomputer built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee by IBM in a partnership with Nvidia. The speedy performance of the machine, called Summit, was announced Friday.
“We’re seeing the U.S. back on top again,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee who tracks supercomputer speeds and rankings.
The Chinese government’s aggressive push to become the leader in technologies such as artificial intelligence, microchips and cellular networks has ignited a rivalry with the United States, the traditional front-runner in the digital realm.