China has come a long way fast in the world of supercomputers and now occupies the number two and number three spots on the Top 500 list.

Now the country has taken another major step forward by being only the third country in the world, after Japan and the USA, to launch a supercomputer made out of processors made in the country.

Just a few days ago, the Sunway Bluelight, a supercomputer that uses processors designed and built in China, was put into operation.

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In the world of supercomputers – imagine computers the size of a warehouse – everything is about getting as many flops (floating point operations per second) as possible. Think of this as how many calculations the computer can perform in a second.

Currently the fastest supercomputer in the world, as ranked by the Top500 list, is the K Computer capable of more than 10.51 petaflops.

Since most of us don’t work with supercomputers and will probably never even come in direct contact with one we wanted to give you a simple frame of reference to understand them better.

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Top500.org recently released updated statistics about the fastest supercomputers in the world. They do this twice per year, and every time the reports make computing enthusiasts drool with mind-boggling performance numbers. You think your souped-up server or gaming rig is fast? Think again.

We cherry-picked some of the more interesting numbers, and made a few additional calculations for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.

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Computer hardware has become infinitely more powerful through the years, a trend that has allowed computer makers to push the performance to levels we almost thought were impossible just a decade earlier.

The exponential growth of computing performance is very noticeable when you examine how the performance of the world’s most powerful computer systems, the supercomputers, has changed over time.

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China just officially climbed to the top position in the supercomputer performance race. You may have read that the country now has the fastest, and also the third fastest, supercomputer in the world.

But this was no overnight success. It’s been a long race for China to get there. Back in the 90s, China’s presence in the supercomputer top 500 was almost non-existent, so most of this progress has happened in the last decade.

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Supercomputers. There probably isn’t a tech geek out there who doesn’t find them intriguing. Huge, hulking computers with performance that’s ages ahead of what we have on our desktops. They are the most powerful computing devices on the planet.

But where in the world do we find these supercomputers? Where are the fastest ones located? Which countries have the most of them? Read on to find out.

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Twice a year, the world’s top 500 supercomputers are announced. The most recent winner is the Jaguar which pretty much wiped the floor with the competition, managing a performance benchmark 69% above the IBM Roadrunner which came in second.

Let’s take a closer look at the Jaguar, the fastest supercomputer in the world today.

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For decades, supercomputers have helped scientists perform calculations that would not have been possible on regular computers of that time. Not only has the construction of supercomputers helped push the envolope of what is possible within the computing field, but the calculations supercomputers have performed for us have helped further both science and technology, and ultimately our lives.

This post pays tribute to some of the most powerful supercomputers the world has seen, all the way from the 1970s until today.

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What is now the fastest supercomputer in Europe was recently unveiled at a research institute in Jülich, Germany. The computer, named Jugene, is capable of a massive one trillion computing operations per second.

Here is a look at what makes Jugene tick, including pictures of its installation.

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