The latest ranking of the world's top 500 supercomputers list, released last week, showed China had narrowed the gap with regional market leader Japan, which slipped to 23 ranked systems from 30 in November.

'This puts China on the same level with major European countries as a consumer of high-performance computing systems,' said Erich Strohmaier, computer scientist for the Future Technologies Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States. He is also one of three researchers who have compiled the top 500 supercomputers list twice a year since 1993.

While some of the most ambitious supercomputing work still takes place in government laboratories, breakthroughs in new commercial markets - such as product design, simulation and animation, financial and weather modelling - is growing on the mainland.

Worldwide, many national and university labs use supercomputers in the areas of life sciences, hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics and space research. Other areas of interest include business intelligence, risk and compliance, aerodynamics study and testing and manufacturing processes.

The US remains the leading consumer of high-performance computing systems, with 294 sites in the top 500 list - up from 267 in November. The global rankings are based on the Linpack benchmark, which measures processor speed and scalability. China's supercomputer market may still be in its infancy, but Mr Strohmaier said the mainland had 'great potential' because it was one of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies.

'Outside of the US and Japan, there is only a small number of companies producing systems sizeable enough to enter the top 500 list,' Mr Strohmaier said.

'Four mainland systems [on the list] were built by Chinese companies, which signalled strong interest by Chinese customers to buy Chinese-built supercomputers.'

That also showed the ambition of Chinese manufacturers to build systems of the largest scale, he said.

Listed at No 31, the highest-ranked Chinese-made system is the Dawning 4000A at the Shanghai Supercomputer Centre. It can do 8.06 teraflops, or trillions, of calculations per second.

Made by server maker Dawning Information Industry Corp, the system was ranked the 10th fastest supercomputer in June last year when it was installed.

The newest domestically built supercomputer in the top 500 list is the GT4000 Supercomputing Blade System, at No100, by Shenzhen-based Galactic Computing, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Shell Electric Manufacturing (Holdings).

Lenovo Group has two systems in the list, DeepComp 6800 at No72 and DeepComp 1800 at No403.

Combined with Taiwan and Hong Kong, the total number of China supercomputers in the list would reach 22. The Linux-based HPCPower, made up of a cluster of IBM xSeries servers, at the University of Hong Kong is the city's lone system in the list at No491.

The No1 position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. This supercomputer, installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, wrested the top ranking from Japan's NEC Earth Simulator in Yokohama in November.

The IBM system set a record Linpack benchmark performance of 136.8 teraflops from 70.72 teraflops in November. Once completed, this system should double in size and remain No1 in the world for the next few editions of the top 500 list.