China's Sunway TaihuLight supercompter (pictured above) is the world's fastest supercomputer. Clocking in at 93 petaflops, this machine makes short work of normal problems. It should, it takes 15.3 megaWatts of power to run it (165 W/Tflop). For the first time, there are no U.S. made components in its manufacture, it is all Chinese.
China, of course, is not resting on its laurels. It has plans for an exascale (quadrillion Flop) computer by the end of 2017. That kind of computing power boggles the mind and opens up new territory for weather forecasting, earthquake modeling, molecular modeling, aero dynamic simulations, simulating the Big Bang, oil and gas exploration, bitcoin mining (I just made up that one) and who knows what else.
Really, "who knows what else" is the exciting part. With every gain of computing power, people think of new things to do with it. Just think of the kind of VR experience one could have with exascale computing power are your finger-tips!
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