Top 500
After a few slow updates, Japan absolutely crushes the competition with the release of K Computer. Six months again the Chinese introduced their first number one computer, Tianhe-1A, which could perform 2.6 PetaFLOPS. K Computer can do over 8 PetaFLOPS. This is the biggest change in the top computer since Japan introduced the Earth Simulator back in June 2002. Ironically, the current list is the first one on which the Earth Simulator would not appear for being too slow.
This is particularly odd list though because despite the introduction of such a fast computer, the overall speed of all 500 computers increased by about average. It's not that the list didn't move much, nearly half the computers are new, but that other than K Computer, the other new computers entered the list towards the bottom. K Computer accounted for over half the overall change in computing speed of the top 500. Much like its Japanese predecessor, the Earth Simulator, such a large lead over the other top computers means that K Computer will likely remain the fastest computer for a while. Which in the world of supercomputers is about two years.
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