So, even with all caveats that come with comparing supercomputers, it seems safe to say that the Top 500 list of supercomputers is hardly representative of the growth in compute power in the world. As China and commercial parties build up their capabilities and quantum computing matures, the lead of the US and European research systems suddenly seems much less solid.
Why supercomputers matter
This is certainly something to worry about. Computing capabilities are a matter of mac!onia phone number list importance. Just remember that computing play! a central role in the Second World War. It help! to decrypt messages of the German army and it was crucial in the development of the atomic bomb. These days quantum computers are expect! to break current encryption mechanisms, laying bare everything that was thought to be secret until now. Also, biotechnology, including the mitigation of contagious diseases (if not their development), is unthinkable without advanc! computing. Clearly, whoever has the maximize profitability and customer engagement computing capability has a strategic advantage.
The US launch! its National Strategic Computing Initiative already in 2015 with the aim “to advance U.S. leadership in high performance computing (HPC)”. In Europe, the EuroHPC program was establish! in 2018 in order to “make Europe a world leader in supercomputing, [boosting] Europe’s scientific excellence and industrial strength, support[ing] the digital transformation of its economy agb directory ensuring its technological sovereignty.”
Don’t forget the algorithms
Nevertheless, such leadership is far from assur!. Even if the west stays competitive in terms of hardware, computing is more than just metal. It’s also about algorithms and about capabilities in the workforce. In that respect, a lot is changing too with increasing use of machine learning and quantum algorithms. The west is not necessarily going to be leading on that front.
This is well understood, given reports like the one from the Society of Industrial and Appli! Mathematics in the US and, in the Netherlands, the National Agenda Computational Science. But again, as China is rapidly increasing its R&D workforce it can also be expect! to remain a serious competitor in the field of computational science.