A new Japanese supercomputer has just become the fastest computer on Earth. And it didn't just squeak by into the top spot: it beat the 2nd fastest computer on Earth by beingthree times faster. Holy smokes.
The K Computer has a processing power of more than 8 petaflops. What's that mean? It means it can process 8 quadrillion calculations per second. Maybe that number will be more impressive to you in numeric form: 8,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. It's faster than 28,000
And they aren't done yet! The goal is to get it up to 10 petaflops by 2012, which I guess is reasonable if you're already at 8 petaflops.
The K Computer was built by Fujitsu and lives at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, where it will work on projects "ranging from global climate research, meteorology, disaster prevention, and medicine."
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