China is ramping¹ up efforts to become the world's supercomputing superpower.

中国正在努力致力于成为世界计算机技术强国。

Jaguar³ has a top speed of 1.75 petaflops" width="466" height="260" src="/upimg/100601/4_033229_1.jpg" />
The US owned Jaguar has a top speed of 1.75 petaflops

Its Nebulae（星云） machine at the National Super Computer Center in Shenzhen, was ranked second on the biannual⁴（一年两次的） Top 500 supercomputer list.

For the first time, a second Chinese supercomputer appears in the list of the top ten fastest machines.

However, the US still dominates the list with more than half the Top 500, including the world's fastest, known as Jaguar.

The Cray computer, which is owned by the Oak Ridge⁵ National Laboratory in Tennessee, has a top speed of 1.75 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

It is used by scientists conducting research in astrophysics（天体物理学） , climate science and nuclear energy.

By comparison, China has 24 machines in the list. Its fastest has a top speed of 1.20 petaflops, more than double the speed of its previous top supercomputer. However, it has a theoretical top speed of nearly 3 petaflops, which would make it the fastest in the world.

The fastest machine in the UK - which has 38 supercomputers on the list - is housed at the University of Edinburgh. It has a top speed of 0.27 petaflops.

"The Top 500 list definitely has an element of flag waving," said Dr Jon Lockley, manager of the Oxford⁶ Supercomputing Centre.

Quick thinking

He said China was rapidly becoming a "player" in high performance computing².

Dawning, the company behind the fastest Chinese machine, is reportedly building an even faster machine for the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin. In addition, it is also developing home-grown silicon⁷ chips to power the behemoths（巨兽） .

"Their use of high-performance computers is really systematic⁸ of their industrial emergence," Dr Lockley told BBC News.

The machines tend to be used for industrial research, such as aircraft design and petroleum⁹ exploration.

Dr Lockley said this was becoming increasingly common around the world.

"Whenever possible, everything is done in a supercomputer," he said.

"Look at Formula One - it's getting rid of all of its wind tunnels and replacing them with supercomputers. It's the same in the aerospace¹⁰ industry as well.

"It means you can all the modelling in the supercomputer and then do just one real world test."

Many of the US machines, by contrast, are owned by the government and are used to monitor the nuclear weapon stockpile（储备） .

The US has one other petaflop machine - owned by the US Department of Energy. Roadrunner, as it is known, held the top spot until Jaguar displaced it in 2009.

All others machines on the list run at so-called teraflop speeds.

A teraflop is the equivalent of one trillion calculations per second.