《TAIPEI TIMES》 Taiwania 2 named 20th-most powerful computer

SPEEDING AHEAD: The supercomputer is to become operational early next year and help with self-driving vehicles, robotics and artificial intelligence experiments

By Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter

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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.

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.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES