The UK has taken over from Germany as the strongest supercomputing country in Europe, with 35 systems ranking in the TOP500 list of the world's biggest supercomputers.

The annual chart of the world's most powerful computers shows that Germany, the next largest, has 17 supercomputers in the chart this year.

Overall however, the list shows that America remains the strongest country for large-scale systems, with 311 entries in the TOP500, followed by Asia with 91 and Europe with 84.

First position in the TOP500 chart again went to IBM's BlueGene/L System at the USA's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with a computing power of 280.6 Teraflops.

A spokesman for the TOp500 says the BlueGene system still remains the only one to have ever exceeded the level of 100 Terflops per second.

'This system is expected to remain the most powerful supercomputer in the world for the next few editions of the TOP500 list,' he said.

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