This Day, That Year

Editor's note: This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up policy.

On Oct 29, 2009, the Chinese National University of Defense Technology's Tianhe-1 supercomputer, the country's first petascale machine, was first revealed to the public in Changsha, Hunan province.

Located at the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin, it was the fastest computer in the world in 2010 and 2011, according to the Top500 supercomputer list, and is one of the few petascale supercomputers in the world - meaning it can handle a quadrillion operations per second.