Cray supercomputer named world's fastest

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Cray supercomputer at the US government's Oak Ridge National Laboratory was on Monday named the world's fastest, overtaking an IBM supercomputer at another American research centre.

The ranking released by researchers from the United States and Germany found that Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, achieved 17.59 petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second.

Titan, which gets funding from the US Department of Energy, is used for research in energy, climate change, efficient engines, materials and other scientific research.

Titan knocked the IBM Sequoia at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California into second place. It could only manage 16.32 petaflops.