Japan supercomputer K beats rivals
After the indignity of seeing its economy overtaken by China's earlier this year, Japan has clawed back a little pride, beating its east Asian rival to produce the world's most powerful computer for the first time in seven years. - The machine, nicknamed K – a play on the Japanese word kei, meaning 10 quadrillion, the number of operations per second it is designed to perform when it is completed next year – crushed the opposition when the latest rankings were announced at the International Supercomputing conference at Hamburg. It harnesses more power than the next five supercomputers combined, and is mush faster than its closest rival, designed by China's National University of Defence Technology. About 1m desktop computers would have to be linked up to replicate its performance.