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Australia's Avoca Retains Top Spot as Fastest Life Science Supercomputer

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NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – In the 43rd edition of the Top500 list, released this week, "Avoca," the 65,536-core IBM BlueGene/Q supercomputer owned by Australia's Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative is still the fastest life science supercomputer in the world.

The system, which clocks in at 715.6 teraflops is now No. 57 on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers, down from the No. 48 spot it held in the November version of the twice-yearly ranking.

Avoca is the only life science system still ranked. Beagle, the 17,856-core, 125.8-teraflop Cray system housed at the University of Chicago's Computation Institute and the only other life science system that was included in the November list — it came in at No. 455 — is no longer ranked.

China's Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, developed by China's National University of Defense Technology, is still the fastest computer according to current rankings. The full list is available here.

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