One of the reasons the US has been able to dominate the world of combat is that we also dominate in the world of computers. Well, China is really in the game, and, at least for much of 2011 will dominate the market. We are building two 20-petaflop supercomputers, many times more powerful than anything operating today, including China’s new supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A (2.5-petaflop) , which should be officially crowned next week as the world’s fastest system.
The US Oak Ridge Laboratory, home for what had been the world’s most powerful system, the Jaguar, a 1.75-petaflop system is building a 20-petaflop system that will include accelerators; it should be ready in 2012. IBM is building a 20-petaflop system for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is expected to arrive at the lab in late 2011 and be in production in 2012.
