A Chinese supercomputer has ascended to the second place in the world in terms of speed, according to the New York Times.

The Dawning Nebulae of the Shenzhen-based National Supercomputing Center has reached a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops, which equals to one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second — according to the latest semiannual ranking of the world's fastest 500 computers.

The latest ranking was released on Monday at the International Supercomputer Conference in Hamburg, Germany. Supercomputers are designed to solve complex scientific and engineering problems.

The Dawning Nebulae is in fact now ranked as the world's fastest in terms of theoretical peak performance, but that is considered a less important measure than the actual computing speed achieved on a standardized computing test.

 
The Cray Jaguar supercomputer, which is based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is still the fastest computer in the world, with a speed of 1.75 petaflops. The data was measured in last November.

Previously, a supercomputer at the Tianjin-based National Supercomputing Center gained the best-ever ranking, the fifth, but now it is at the seventh place.

The United States, which has 282 of the world's fastest 500 computers on the new list, remains a leader in this area.