The Chinese boast two of the world’s top ten fastest supercomputers, according to rankings published by the TOP500 organization. The Nebulae, based in Shenzhen, is currently the fastest system worldwide in theoretical peak performance at 2.98 petaflops per second (PFlop/s).
The main objective of the TOP500 list, compiled with the help of high-performance computer experts, computational scientists, manufacturers, and the Internet community in general is to provide a ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications. The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.