Washington, July 24 - The world's fastest and most powerful supercomputer, named Novo-G, has become operational at the University of Florida.

Novo-G gets the first part of its name from the Latin term for 'make anew, change, alter' and the second from 'G' for 'genesis.' A 'reconfigurable' computer, it can re-arrange its internal circuitry to suit the task at hand.

Applications range from calculations with data from space satellites to other supercomputers, said Alan George, professor at the University of Florida's (UF) National Science Foundation Centre (NSF) for high-performance reconfigurable computing.

'It is very powerful technology, but it is also very complicated technology,' George said. 'We don't want this important technology to be accessible only to experts.'

Traditional computers use so-called 'fixed logic devices' to perform a large variety of tasks. But this jack-of-all-trades approach requires a substantial amount of overhead in space and energy, no matter what work needs to be done.