The Fujitsu-built K Computer in Kobe, Japan, is the fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the Top500 List of Supercomputers, to be announced today.
(Credit: Fujitsu)That's according to the Top500 Supercomputing List, which is expected to be released today at the conference in Hamburg, Germany. The new leader, Japan's K Computer, makes its home in Kobe's RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science. K Computer sped to the front of the class by achieving more than 8 quadrillion calculations per second (petaflop/s), which pushed it ahead of last November's winner, the Tianhe-1A at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, which in the latest round achieved 2.6 petaflop/s.
K Computer was built by Fujitsu, and contains more than 80,000 CPUs with eight cores each. The last time Japan sat at the top of the supercomputing world was with NEC's Earth Simulator, which was dethroned in November 2004, after two years as fastest supercomputer.
In the top five, following Tianhe-1A, in ranked order, is the Department of Energy's Jaguar, housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with 1.75 petaflop/s; China's Nebulae at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzen, with 1.27 petaflop/s; and Tsubame 2.0 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, with 1.19 petaflop/s. More
