We are often surprised by the speed of the latest computer or smartphone, but the supercomputers that do the world's craziest calculations will always put our dinky consumer electronics to shame.
These supercomputers are incredibly powerful. They are made up of giant mainframes linking tens of thousands of processors to achieve incredible computing speeds, measured in petaflops. One petaflop equals 1 quadrillion calculations per second. For comparison, that's more than 12,000 times faster than a MacBook Pro.
The United States is currently home to the world's fastest supercomputer, Sequoia, according to the Top 500 List. The Sequoia supercomputer, housed at the Department of Energy's lab in California, reached a speed of 16 petaflops when it was ranked in June.
Another American supercomputer, called Titan, which can hit a peak of 20 petaflops, is on track to dethrone Sequoia as the fastest machin0Titan replaces Jaguar, which is ranked sixth on the latest list.
#10 Nebulae
Speed: 1.27 petaflops
Date Created: 2009
Country: China
Located at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzen, China, Nebulae is used for geological studies, oil exploration, space exploration, and avionics.
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#9 Curie
Speed: 1.36 petaflops
Country: France
Date Created: 2012
The Curie supercomputer was created by a French organization called the Grand Equipment National de Calcul Intensif and is located in the supercomputer center Très Grand Centre de Calcul (which is French for "the very large computing center"). Current research includes simulating the creation of the universe to discover the origins of life.
#8 JuQUEEN
Speed: 1.38 petaflops
Country: Germany
Date Created: 2012
The Jülich Research Centre in Germany is home to the JuQUEEN, which is used for computational science, engineering, climatology, physics, and materials science.
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