New York ? IBM Corp. has claimed unofficial bragging rights as owner of the world’s fastest supercomputer.

For three years running, the fastest supercomputer has been NEC’s Earth Simulator in Japan.

“The fact that a non-U.S. vendor like NEC had the fastest computer was seen as a big challenge for the U.S. computer industry,” said Horst Simon, director of the supercomputing center at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California.

Earth Simulator can sustain speeds of 35.86 teraflops. IBM said its unfinished BlueGene/L System can sustain speeds of 36 teraflops. A teraflop is 1 trillion calculations per second.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plans to install the Blue Gene/L system next year with 130,000 processors and 64 racks, half a tennis court in size.

While IBM’s speed sets a new benchmark, the official list of the world’s fastest supercomputers will not be released until November.