USA has the world's most powerful computer but China still holds the lead for supercomputing

TOP500 has been compiling lists of the world's most powerful supercomputers for the last quarter of a century. Back in June 1993 the world's most powerful computer was Numerical Wind Tunnel at Fujitsu National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan followed by CM-5/1024, Thinking Machines Corporation Los Alamos Laboratory in the USA. 

In that  year the top 500 included 232 in the US, 115 in Japan, 56 in Germany, 25 in France and 24 in the UK. There were three in Taiwan but none in Mainland China.

The first Chinese supercomputer did not appear in the top 500 until November 1999.

First forward to June 2018. There are now 206 supercomputers in China, up from 202 last November, 124 in the US, down from 143, 36 in Japan, up from 35, 22 in the UK, up from 15, 21 in Germany, no change, 18 in France, also no change.

So China's displacement of the US continues but there is one ray of hope. The world's most powerful supercomputer is in the US for the first time in five and a half years: Summit, at the Department of Energy's  Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But that seems small compensation for the growing gap between China and the US.

The latest ranking also shows that large areas of the world are computer deserts. In the whole of Africa there is only supercomputer, in South Africa. There are only four in the Islamic world, all in Saudi Arabia, three of them at Aramco. There is one in Latin America, in Brazil.