Europe's fastest supercomputer unveiled in Germany

A new supercomputer with the power of 50,000 home PCs -- the fastest in Europe and the third worldwide -- was unveiled today in Germany.

The "Jugene", capable of 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, ranks behind the "Roadrunner" and "Jaguar" computers in the United States, said Kosta Schinarakis from the Juelich research centre, where the computer is located.

Jugene will be used for a wide variety of operations, including research on fuel cells for electric cars, weather forecasting and the origins of the universe, the centre said.

The machine is no ordinary PC, requiring 295,000 processors located in 72 lockers each the size of a telephone box.