Japan creates world's fastest supercomputer which is as quick as one MILLION desktop PCs

A Japanese supercomputer has snatched the title of the world's fastest machine, ending China's brief reign at the top after six months.

The K supercomputer, built by the Fujitsu Company, is as fast as one million desktop computers connected together.

It has more than three times the power than the previous title-holder and is capable of performing eight quadrillion calculations each second.

A quadrillion is one followed by 15 zeroes and in computer jargon the speed is known as 8.2 petaflops.

The previous fastest machine was the Chinese computer Tianhe-1A, which was clocked at 2.507 petaflops and highlighted the emergence of China's growing technological and economic power.

The Tianhe- 1A machine was the first time China had topped the speed list, wrestling the title from the U.S. who had four of the top ten supercomputers.

Experts said the development of the K machine, which is faster than five of its closest competitors combined, marks a giant leap forward in technology.

'It's a very impressive machine - it's a lot more powerful than the other computers,' said Professor Jack Dongarra, who releases a six-monthly list of the world's top supercomputers.

The speed rankings are based by running a standard mathematical equation.

The bragging rights for Japan's K computer, which has cost $1.2bn to develop, marks a return to the top for the first time in seven years.

Developed at RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, the giant computer is housed in a climate-controlled, warehouse-like structure.

It consists of 672 cabinets filled with circuit boards containing almost 70,000 processors. A family computer or laptop uses a single processor.

The K supercomputer uses enough energy to power 10,000 homes and although its creators claim the machine is energy efficient, its running costs are put at £6m a year.

'Use of the K computer is expected to have a groundbreaking impact in fields ranging from global climate research, meteorology, disaster prevention, and medicine, thereby contributing to the creation of a prosperous and secure society,' a spokesman for the RIKEN institute said.

Fujitsu and RIKEN chiefs say the project had overcome difficulties posed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeast Tohoku region.

There are five U.S. supercomputers in the top-10 rankings, including the third-ranked Jaguar system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Others in the top ten include two machines from China, two from Japan and one from France.

Armchair astronaut discovers Mars 'space station' using Google earth

We have all heard of little green men from Mars.

But now an American 'armchair astronaut' claims to have discovered a mysterious structure on the surface of the red planet - by looking on Google earth.

David Martines, whose YouTube video of the 'station' has racked up over 200,000 hits so far, claims to have randomly uncovered the picture while scanning the surface of the planet one day.


The white dot in the centre of the screen has set the blogosphere alight with rumours of a secret base

Describing the 'structure' as a living quarters with red and blue stripes on it, to the untrained eye it looks nothing more than a white splodge on an otherwise unblemished red landscape.

He even lists the co-ordinates 49'19.73"N 29 33'06.53"W so others can go see the anomaly for themselves.

In a pre recorded 'fly by' video of the object, Mr Martines describes what he thinks the station might be.

He said: 'This is a video of something I discovered on Google Mars quite by accident.

'I call it Bio-station Alpha, because I'm just assuming that something lives in it or has lived in it.


NASA and Google have both yet to respond to the 'finding', circled here

'It's very unusual in that it's quite large, it's over 700 feet long and 150 feet wide, it looks like it's a cylinder or made up of cylinders.

'It could be a power station or it could be a biological containment or it could be a glorified garage - hope it's not a weapon.

'Whoever put it up there had a purpose I'm sure. I couldn't imagine what the purpose was. I couldn't imagine why anybody would want to live on Mars.

'It could be a way station for weary space travellers. It could also belong to NASA, I don't know that they would admit that.

'I don't know if they could pull off such a project without all the people seeing all the material going up there. I sort of doubt NASA has anything to do with this.

'I don't know if NASA even knows about this.'

The 'discovery' is similar to that of the infamous 'face on Mars'

Uncovered by the Viking 1 probe in 1976, a quirk of geography threw shadows over a small hill on the Cydonia region of Mars, making the inanimate rock look like a carved face.

The picture was heralded as proof of an alien civilisation by some but was dismissed as a mere trick of the light by scientists at NASA.