China’s rise as a supercomputing power

NPR : In the second of a three-part series on China and its efforts to become a technological superpower, Louisa Lim centers on China’s rapid rise in the area of supercomputing. Last November China boasted the world’s fastest machine: the $60 million Tianhe-1A. Although the achievement was short-lived—within six months, Japan came up with one three times faster—China has built 61 out of the top 500 supercomputing sites in the world, making it second only to the US, which has 255. Despite the exponential growth in the number of supercomputers, however, China still faces several challenges, among them its reliance on foreign technology for its processors and a lack of software that can make use of its newfound computing power.