Now, China and the US are competing with each other for supercomputer supremacy. Each of them has 171 supercomputers followed by Germany (31), Japan (27), France (20) and the UK (13).
At the same time, the website noted that "China has maintained its dominance at the top of the list with the same number 1 and 2 systems from six months ago: Sunway TaihuLight, at 93 petaflops, and Tianhe-2, at 34 petaflops." It means that no American-made supercomputer can quite compete with the Chinese one.
China demonstrated a new record-breaking capacity supercomputer, made exclusively from Chinese-built microprocessors, in summer 2016. The new supercomputer system called Sunway TaihuLight can perform up to 124.5 petaflops, and is the first system to surpass 100 petaflops.
China's efforts in developing its own processors stems from Washington's decision to block Beijing's access to Intel's processors last February. This was based on an unfounded fear that the Chinese government would use the technology to develop nuclear weapons.
