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Surprising Science

U.S. to Build Fastest Supercomputer

A U.S. national lab plans to unveil a “Titan” supercomputer in 2012 that would dwarf the computing speeds of the latest record holder from China, as well as all previous competitors.
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Geeks and nationalists alike may begin celebrating America’s plans to build a supercomputer that will dwarf China’s current record-holder. “The new computing behemoth is designed to crunch 20,000 trillion calculations (20 petaflops) per second, according to PhysOrg. That handily beats China’s Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which can do 2,500 trillion calculations (2.5 petaflops) per second. Such calculations look staggering on a human scale. It would take 120 billion people with 120 billion calculators 50 years to do what the Titan supercomputer might do in a day.”

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