The computer – whose name translates to Milky Way-2 – has topped the twice yearly survey by Top 500 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

Tianhe-2 was developed by China’s National University of Defence Technology, and has been completed a full two years ahead of its previously estimated arrival in 2015.

Built with Intel Processors amounting to over 3 million computer cores, Tianhe-2 is capable of 33.86 petraflop/s – referring to the amount of ‘floating point’ calculations the computer can make per second.

Although that figure will mean little to most, by point of comparison the US based Titan, the computer that topped the November 2012 survey, is ‘only’ capable of 17.59 petraflop/s.

Tianhe-2 is to be moved to the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho before the end of the year, and will be used for research & education purposes in South China.

The Chinese supercomputer’s predecessor, Tianhe-1A, was declared the world’s fastest computer in 2010, although was overtaken by Japan’s K computer the following year.

With the US, China, Japan and others all constantly developing and building on their own supercomputers, the dominance of Tianhe-2 is likely to be challenged sooner rather than later. The U.S. maintain the majority of the world's supercomputers at 252 of the 500 most powerful systems (compared to 112 in Europe and 119 in Asia).

(Photo: Jack Dongarra)