China’s new Shuguang supercomputers are meant to operate about 50 per cent faster than the U.S.’s best machines. They will be delivered to the Chinese Academy of Science’s Computer Network Information Center in Beijing this June for the global Top500 rankings of the world’s fastest computers. (South China Morning Post)

Talking point: The United States took the top spot in 2018, ending China’s five-year streak. China owns 45.4 per cent of top systems globally, while the U.S. owns 21.8 per cent, according to the November 2018 Top500 list. It’s another industry the two have a fierce rivalry in, especially considering China’s rapid ascent in the field. After the Barack Obama administration banned the sale of high-end Intel, Nvidia and AMD chips for Chinese supercomputers in 2015, the country began building them without the U.S. parts. In 2016, it released the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, which was named the fastest on the Top500 list in June that year. The significance of supercomputers is in their ability to perform complex calculations, including in quantum mechanics, weather forecasting and oil and gas exploration. As such, creating the fastest model gives a country a major leg up in innovation above the rest of the world.