Much fuss will be made over the ORNL's new Summit supercomputer at the ISC18 event next week - in particular the fact that it means the USA replaces China as the home of world's fastest supercomputer according to www.top500.org. This brings the usual question as to whether it really matters which country has the biggest supercomputer.
Having a supercomputer 20%, or even 2x, faster than a competitor isn’t critical on its own, because it is possible to make up 20% or 2x actual competitive capability through better software, better people, or better service delivery practices.
However, a 10x faster supercomputer would be an issue, because that would typically reflect a political commitment to High Performance Computing (HPC) involving hardware and software and people - and so could mean potential capability dominance.
Of course, if you had the 2x slower supercomputer without investing in people/software/practices to make up the difference, then that would be a meaningful competitive gap and would matter.
Read more in this article at WiredUK: "Why the US and China's brutal supercomputer war matters"
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