China's Latest Cyberweapon Unveiled, Tianhe-2 Is Huge, Fast And Dangerous

The Chinese military has unveiled its latest supercomputer, and the People's Liberation Army, which is suspected in numerous cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies and corporations, said that it's twice as fast as the previous speediest computer.

According to FloatingPath.com, the computer, dubbed Tianhe-2 and built by China's National University of Defense Technology, is twice as fast, at 33.86 petaflops, as previous speed champ Titan, owned by Oak Ridge National Labs in the U.S., which runs at 17.59 petaflops.

"With the capacity to perform over 38 quadrillion calculations per second, and China’s propensity for cyberattacks, the Tianhe-2 has surely caught the attention of defense officials in Washington," FloatingPath said.

But one fact might put U.S. cyberdefenders a bit more at ease. "According to reports, Chinese computer scientists are still working on porting applications to the Tianhe-2. In contrast, on the first day of operation, Oak Ridge’s Titan had 5 applications ready to crunch simulation data for experiments ranging from combustion simulations to atmospheric modeling," noted Engineering.com.

Engineering.com listed the top 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world as follows:

1. Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2) - 33.86 petaflops

2. Titan - 17.59 petaflops

3. Sequoia - 17.17 petaflops

4. K computer - 10.51 petaflops

5. Mira - 8.59 petaflops

6. Piz Daint - 6.27 petaflops

7. Stampede - 5.17 petaflops

8. JUQUEEN - 5.01 petaflops

9. Vulcan - 4.29 petaflops

10. SuperMUC - 2.90 petaflops