Information Technology

1)Tianhe-2 (China)

China's new Tianhe-2 supercomputer officially became the fastest supercomputer in the world on Monday by blowing America's Titan supercomputer out of the water.

A group of computer scientists and engineers who twice a year release the "Top500" list of fastest supercomputers measured the Tianhe-2 at 33.9 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second). That's nearly twice as fast as the Titan, which was relegated to the second spot on the list.

Also dubbed Milkyway-2, Tianhe-2 came online two years before expected. It was manufactured by China's National University of Defense Technology and will be relocated to the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho in southwest China by the end of this year.

NUDT has listed several possible uses for Tianhe-2, including simulations for testing airplanes, processing "big data," and aiding in government security.

The last time a Chinese system landed on the list's top spot was in 2010 when the Tianhe-1 was ranked the fastest in the world.

2)Titan(United States)

It reached the number one spot on the "Top500 List" in November, but Titan has already been bumped down to second place.

Titan resides at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and helps scientists pioneer research into climate change, bio fuels and nuclear energy.

The United States hosts 253 of the 500 supercomputers on the list -- more than any other country

3)K Computer(Japan)

Japan's K Computer became the first supercomputer capable of running faster than 10 petaflops. It held the title of the world's fastest supercomputer from June 2011 until June 2012. Now, it's ranked fourth.

Still, it's one of only 26 supercomputers in the world with performance greater than 1 petaflop.

There's something to be said for remaining in the top ten of the list for multiple years in an industry that's moving rapidly. The last system ranked on this year's Top500 list ranked 320 just six months ago.

K Computer is installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan and was manufactured by Fujitsu.

4)Stampede (United States)

"Stampede" at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas is one of those rare supercomputers that actually moved up in the rankings.

After receiving an upgrade since the last "Top500 List" was released in November, Stampede moved up one notch to number six.

It was manufactured by Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) and has achieved 5.2 petaflops.

Any researcher at a U.S. institution can submit a request to use Stampede, making it one of the largest open computer systems in the world. Currently, researchers are using Stampede to explore the flow of ice from Antarctica into the sea and to forecast earthquakes.

5)Juqueen (Germany)

Juqueen is the most powerful European supercomputer. Peaking at the speed of about 5 petaflops, it moved down two spots since November's "Top500 List" to No. 7 on the June list.

Different versions of the system, which have been manufactured by IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), have also cracked the top 10 in the past.

Juqueen is housed at the Forschungszentrum Juelich research center in Germany. It is one of 19 supercomputers located in Germany that made the Top500. The United Kingdom and France have 29 and 23 systems, respectively, on the list.