China has always been the U.S.’s most intimidating competitor. From the days of the Korean War to today, in the IT generation, the Orient continues to wow us with their innovations. Though the United States has been a leader in modern technology (they currently have the world’s fastest computer in the Jaguar, a system that can perform the same number of calculations in a day as a normal computer does in 100 years) China is closely following. Recently, China created their own supercomputer, and it is regarded as the second fastest system in the world.

The system is called the Dawning Nebulae, and it is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzen, China. It currently operates at a speed of 1.27 petaflops. What is a petaflop? Sounds like something you eat with a side of hummus, doesn’t it? A petaflop refers to a measurement in which one thousand trillion mathematical operations are performed per second. The American-produced Jaguar has 1.75 petaflops, slightly higher.

Many experts believe that China’s creation of the computer shows a serious effort by the country to become the worldwide innovator of computer technology. Not only do the Chinese want some bragging rights (who can blame them? They scored ten less medals than the U.S. did at the Beijing Olympics) but they also want to modernize their society and stimulate economic growth. If this computer technology is further explored, it may be able to help multiple industries in China and throughout the world, including manufacturing businesses, and energy-related companies.

Of course, these are million dollar systems, hardly affordable to the mass market. What is the most powerful system on the market today? The MX8 System is believed to be the fastest and most powerful computer on the market, with its 500GB SATA-X instant hard drives and its ATI x800 video card.

There is always something bigger and better in the works, at least in the world of computers!

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