China Claims World's Fastest Supercomputer

The world's fastest supercomputer belongs to China. Unveiled yesterday at the Annual Meeting of National High Performance Computing (HPC China 2010) in Beijing, Tianhe-1A is the world's fastest supercomputer with a performance record of 2.507 petaflops.Tianhe-1A was designed by the National University of Defense Technology in China and is already fully operational.

An official listing is expected on Friday. If verified, Tianhe-1A would surpass the U.S. Department of Energy's Cray XT5 Jaguar, the current record holder, by a significant margin. The DOE's supercomputer is capable of sustained computing of 1.75 petaflops, says ABC News. The announcement ends the U.S.' dominance in supercomputing and will likely sound off alarm bells about U.S. competitiveness and defense, according to The Wall Street Journal.