But following a ranking of top supercomputers is not the same as being a fan of Tiger Woods. Its real value is found by viewing the list from the bottom up.

To make , compiled by academic researchers in the U.S and Europe and released this week, now requires computing power of 17.1 TFLOPS, up from 12.64 TFLOPS six months ago, which represents increases in performance -- and price.

Just two years ago, the entry point on the list was 4 TFLOPS. And you can buy a system of similar power

As the PC democratized computing, the increasing power of supercomputing's low-end, is where the big changes are happening.

The ability of these machines to effectively run applications across hundreds and thousands of cores for little money has the potential of putting affordable, high-performance computing in many more offices and research centers that could benefit from their power.