A new supercomputer with the power of 50,000 home PCs - the fastest in Europe and the third worldwide - has been unveiled in Germany.

The "Jugene", capable of 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, ranks behind the "Roadrunner" and "Jaguar" computers in the United States, said Kosta Schinarakis from the Juelich research centre, where the computer is located.

Jugene will be used for a wide variety of operations, including research on fuel cells for electric cars, weather forecasting and the origins of the universe, the centre said.