Climate variations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans will drive the planet's climate in 2012.  

For the first time ever, the Top Ten supercomputer list remains unchanged from the previous list.  Some have improved their overall performance, but none changed positions.

IBM today formally opened IBM Research and Development - Australia in Melbourne today. The laboratory is part of IBM's 'smarter planet' initiative, and iTWire spoke to one of the researchers.

Not since the Earth Simulator was dethroned in 2004 has Japan held the top position in the Top500 supercomputer list.

Seeking to replace its existing SGI Altix supercomputer with a new model powered by 64-bit Intel processors, Australia’s science organisation has gone to tender to double its supercomputing power.

Based on an idea from Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel developer Mike Galbraith has implemented a patch which offers a huge performance improvement for interactive tasks.

As expected, Chinese supercomputers have taken the first and third places in the latest list of the world's top supercomputers and only five of the top ten are from USA.  Linux continues to reign supreme.

The Chinese have triumphed over the United States in the stakes for the world’s fastest supercomputer. The Chinese Tianhe-1 supercomputer is blazing fast!

Currently ranked second in the Top500 Supercomputers, China's Nebulae is about to receive a reappraisal and is expected to be crowned number one in November's list.  But Nebulae's pre-eminence will be short-lived.  Current number one Jaguar is about to undergo an upgrade and there is a new super-supercomputer in the wings, with performance nearly ten times that of Jaguar and Nebulae.

Updated: Hot on the heels of yesterday's Top500 supercomputer announcement comes a reminder that Australia is a significant player in the field with the only NVidia CUDA research centre in the southern hemisphere.