Ireland has a new fastest supercomputer that is two-and-a-half times more powerful than the previous leading machine.

The device, owned by a software company, is made by Hewlett-Packard and runs at a speed of 365.9 Teraflops per second - the equivalent of around 8,000 off-the-shelf high-spec laptops.

According to the Irish Supercomputer List, the unnamed company also owns the new second and third fastest supercomputers in Ireland, both of which run at 307 Teraflops per second.

Together, the top three machines have a performance that is 1.5 times the combined power of all 28 machines on the same list six months ago - representing a more than doubling of Ireland's supercomputing strength in that time.

Collectively the three most powerful devices have the power equivalent to around 20,000 laptops.

The three new machines have displaced into fourth place the Irish Centre for High End Computing's (ICHEC) Fionn supercomputer, which had been the most powerful computing device here since it was launched in November 2013.

According to those responsible for compiling it, the new list represents a dramatic shake-up of the Irish High Performance Computing (HPC) landscape.

For the first time, they say, combined supercomputer power in Ireland has breached the 1 Petaflops threshold, and now stands at 1.42 Petaflops per second.

The new top three devices make the Top500 list of supercomputers globally, slotting in a positions 357, 453, and 454.

Ireland now sits at number two in the world in terms of the number of Top500 supercomputers per capita and number 11 globally in relation to supercomputing capacity per capita.

But commenting on the results, ICHEC pointed to the widening gulf between supercompter funding in industry and public research here.

"As investment in open publicly funded research infrastructure could not be maintained over recessionary times, the Irish National HPC Service has seen no investment since 2012, leaving Irish researchers with one of the lowest access to computational resources in the EU per capita," said ICHEC Director, JC Desplat.

Despite the strides in capacity here in the past six months, Irish supercomputers remain far behind the most powerful in the world.

Earlier this week it emerged a new supercomputer in China had topped the latest list of the world's most powerful machines.

The 93 petaflop Sunway TaihuLight is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wux and at full capacity can carry out 93 trillion calculations per second.

The Irish Supercomputing List is published every six months, and is drawn up by an independent group of computer science researchers representing industry and academia, including members at UCD, Maynooth University and Queen's University Belfast, led by Dr Brett Becker of the UCD School of Computer Science.

Supercomputers are used in Ireland by academic institutions and companies for a variety of activities, including weather forecasting, big data processing and software development.

Commenting on the results, ICHEC pointed to the widening gulf between funding in industry and public research.

"As investment in open publicly funded research infrastructure could not be maintained over recessionary times, the Irish National HPC Service has seen no investment since 2012, leaving Irish researchers with one of the lowest access to computational resources in the EU per capita," said ICHEC Director, JC Desplat.