The supercomputer "EKA", which means number one in Sanskrit, was named Asia's fastest and the world's fourth fastest in the Top 500 Supercomputer list announced at an International Conference for High Performance Computing at Reno (California), USA, on Monday night.

This is the first time that such a system developed in India has been ranked among the world's ten fastest.

Supercomputers are primarily used by universities, military and scientific research labs. They are used in high calculation-intensive jobs like quantum physics, weather and climate research, study of chemical compounds, simulation of aircraft in wind tunnels and detonation of nuclear weapons.

A total of nine supercomputers developed in India have appeared in the Top 500 list, including one more system (179th) developed at Tata Sons' wholly-owned subsidiary Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) in Pune, where EKA was developed.

Others include a system developed at Indian Institute of Science (58th) and six IBM systems (ranked at 152nd, 158th, 336th, 339th, 340th and 371st) developed in the country.

The group chairman Ratan Tata said in a statement: "High performance computing solutions have an ever-increasing role in the scientific and new technological space the world over.

The Tata group has supported this development activity and is extremely proud of the team that has developed and built this supercomputer, which is now ranked the world's fourth fastest.