They just keep getting faster and faster.

No, I am actually not going to talk about running this time. Sorry for the misleading title.

In case you haven't heard, China's Tianhe-1A is now the fastest supercomputer ever built. It can deliver approximately 2.5 petaflops. Yes, you read that right. Two and a half petaflops. Hot damn. And what would one do with such computing power, might you ask? I don't know, how about simulate the Earth at speeds about seventy times faster than the Earth Simulator? I know some guys down here in Texas that would love to abuse appreciate that kind of computing power. They were, after all, just featured on the cover of Science.



And for those of you who care, Tianhe means "Milky Way". Looking at a list of galaxy names, I am not sure if a trend of naming supercomputers after galaxies is the best idea. Otherwise, I might soon be running code on Small Magellanic Cloud. Actually, on second thought, I think I will be naming my next machine just that.