Technology Curve: Terrific Advances In Supercomputers

The technology curve has indeed been accelerating as the capacity of supercomputers continually soar.

This update from the Economist,

``AMERICA's dominance in the field of supercomputing has slipped over the past decade, according to the latest TOP500 chart, a biannual list of the world's fastest number-crunching machines. Having accounted for 56% of the top 50 machines a decade ago, America now accounts for 40%. Japan has lost ground too, while Britain and Germany have held steady. The greatest gains have been made by France, due in part to the use of supercomputers in the energy industry, and China, which had no supercomputers in the top 50 a decade ago, but now has four, including the world's second-fastest machine, at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen. Other countries have also moved up the rankings, which indicates that supercomputers are more widely distributed around the world than they used to be: the top 50 machines include computers in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and India."

The loss of the dominance of the US in this field does not exhibit a zero sum based competition, where one's gains translates to the loss of the others, which appear to be the undertone of the article.

What's truly happening is that the progress in technological innovation in supercomputers have been more diffused globally where more nations have been participating in the growing pie.

The general advances in the capability of supercomputing from Top500.org illustrates of the dynamics of the growing pie. The progress has been breath-taking.

In my view it's merely the motions of Moore's law at work, and possibly Ray Kurzweil's technological singularity.

And this has been fuelled by competition, globalization and collaboration.

And it would be a mistake to gloss over the implications of such remarkable progress in technology innovation to the real economy.

Read more interactive graph of supercomputers from BBC here