IBM’s BlueGene/L computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, has once again been crowned world champion by the TOP500 list of the fastest supercomputers used for scientific applications, with a computing speed of 280.6 terraflops per second.

Horst Simon, associate laboratory director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a member of the TOP500 team, said the next TOP500 champ would be a big jump to 500 or 600 or 700 teraflops, maybe even to a petaflop.