Source: BBC

A China-based supercomputer has leapfrogged rivals to be named the world’s most powerful system.

Tianhe-2, developed by the government-run National University of Defence Technology, topped the latest list of the fastest 500 supercomputers, by a team of international researchers.

They said the news was a “surprise” since the system had not been expected to be ready until 2015.

China last held the top rank between November 2010 and June 2011.

According to the list, the US has the world’s second and third fastest supercomputers, Titan and Sequoia, while Japan’s K computer drops to fourth spot.

The latest version of the twice-yearly list – which is overseen by Hans Meuer, professor of computer science at the University of Mannheim – was published to coincide with the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany.

Unique features

According to the Linpack benchmark, Tianhe-2 – meaning Milky Way-2 – operates at 33.86 petaflop/sec, the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second.  Read further