Sunway TaihuLight achieving the top spot on TOP500 is a great feat, but the practicalities of using that machine have not been detailed and we will have to wait and watch if it empowers a major breakthrough.

That said, there are many problems that can use the FLOPS on offer (they are targeting CFD, BigData Analytics etc.). The new machine has an indigenous architecture and they have a set plan to port applications to ensure that the massive compute is utilized by as many domains as possible.

The US DoE has its plans and roadmap for Exascale and aims to achieve it by 2023 Paul Messina Shares Deep Dive Into US Exascale Roadmap. US still dominates a healthy share in the list and this is not a one off race, the list can be expected to churn a lot more in the coming few years.

With all this happening, it is definitely a good time for HPC as a market, and things will eventually lead to an ExaScale computer.