In 2008, the IBM Roadrunner was featured on this blog as the then world’s fastest computer. Now, according to the latest semiannual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, the “Jaguar” takes first place. With a staggering peak speed of 2.33 petaflops (over two thousand trillion calculations per second), “Jaguar,” located at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in the US, is now the world’s fastest supercomputer. Jaguar is devoted to scientific research to the benefit of the planet, such as climate change, renewable energy, new medicines and the like.

The U.S. Department of Energy owns both Jaguar and Roadrunner, but uses them for different purposes. Jaguar is an “open science” tool for peer-reviewed research on a wide range of subjects, wheras Roadrunner is devoted to the complex and classified evaluation of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Below is a picture of Jaguar. Visit the US National Center for Computational Sciences for Jaguar’s technical specifications and more pictures.