World's Fastest

May 22, 2007 IBM today simultaneously launched the fastest microprocessor ever built and an ultra-powerful new computer server that leverages the chip’s many breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualization technology. The new server is the first ever to hold all four major benchmark speed records for business and technical performance. At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half.  Read More

May 17, 2007 The BRABUS S V12 S Biturbo coupe is not just the most powerful coupe in the world - it is also the fastest street-legal coupe. It’s vital performance statistics of 0 – 100 km/h in 4.0 seconds, 200 km/h after just 11.9 seconds and an electronically limited top speed of 340 km/h are all without equal. Based on the latest Mercedes CL 600 model, the SV12 S Biturbo coupe can be ordered as a complete car starting at 178,980 Euros or can be built based on an existing current CL 600 model. The engine is based on the turbocharged Mercedes 600 twelve-cylinder engine and represents the most powerful street-legal V12 engine in the world producing 730 hp / 537 kW at 5,100 rpm. Just as extraordinary is the peak torque of 1,320 Nm at just 2,100 rpm, which is limited electronically to 1,100 Nm. The mods are extensive, starting with installing a special BRABUS crankshaft with longer stroke, combined with a bigger bore and correspondingly sized forged pistons, increases displacement from 5.5 to 6.3 liters. After that, the cylinder heads are precision-machined and four new camshafts are fitted, two new exhaust manifolds, two larger turbochargers, a high-efficiency intercooler and a high-performance exhaust system with metal catalysts and low back pressure.  Read More

May 4, 2007 One of the prime motive forces in computer technology is the gaming industry. And by releasing the world’s fastest graphics processing unit, NVIDIA has ensured that it is in the driving seat. Available on May 15, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is priced at US$829. Given that the graphics industry evolves extremely quickly, it is quite an achievement for a company to leapfrog its own performance milestones as NVIDIA has done with the GeForce 8 Series GPUs.  Read More

February 22, 2007 Canon is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its top-selling EOS single lens reflex camera system by announcing the EOS-1D Mark III Digital SLR, the world's fastest digital SLR camera. At 10 frames per second, the 10.1 megapixel EOS-1D Mark III digital SLR can fire huge motor-driven bursts of 110 Large JPEGs or 30 RAW files because it employs the new Dual DIGIC III image processor engine, providing enough computational horsepower to do parallel processing at a rate unmatched by any other digital SLR. The all-new 10.1 megapixel, APS-H size CMOS sensor is the most light-sensitive and innovative sensor that Canon has developed to date. It features a new microlens array and a more efficient pixel structure for ultra-low noise, resulting in exceptional image quality and an amazing ISO range of 100 to 3200 with extensions to ISO 50 and a highly usable ISO 6400. Scheduled for initial U.S. shipments in Spring, the estimated selling price of the EOS-1D Mark III Digital SLR will be similar to that of its predecessor, the EOS-1D Mark II N Digital SLR. A ready to shoot EOS-1D Mk III weighs in at only 1,335g (225g lighter than its predecessor, including battery).  Read More

January 18, 2007 Yesterday we wrote about the coming of the Solid State Drive and today we’re reporting that Seagate has further pushed the limits of current drive technology with the introduction of the world's fastest hard drive - the Savvio 15K drive is a new addition to the Savvio family of 2.5-inch Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise drives and it’s aptly named because it spins at 15,000 rpm. The drive's unique combination of features include its 70 percent smaller size, lower power consumption, industry's fastest seek time and the industry's highest reliability.  Read More

December 18, 2006 When Honda released the first mass-produced four-cylinder motorcycle in 1969, the 72 bhp CB750K caused a sensation due to its performance. The horsepower and capacity wars that followed have seen the capacity of production motorcycles raised to a staggering 2.3 litres and it seems that the scooter world is following suit with the announcement of the Gilera GP 800, an 850cc V-twin-engined scooter that will most likely become the the world’s fastest scooter when it hits showroom floors a year from now. Suzuki kicked off the maxiscooter craze in 1999 with its Burgman 400, then Yamaha followed with the 40 horsepower twin cylinder 500 T-Max in 2000, then Honda trumped that with the 50 bhp Silver Wing 600 twin then in 2002, Suzuki raised the bar further with the Burgman 650. As forecast earlier this year, Piaggio (which owns Gilera, Vespa, Moto Guzzi, Aprilia and Derbi) has been working on a new 850cc maxi scooter and the bike was shown publicly for the first time in Milan. The scooter will bear the Gilera name, with its 75bhp 90 degree V-twin motor giving it a top speed of more than 120mph. Perhaps even more significantly, the Aprilia engine comes straight from the new Aprilia Mana and features an advanced electronic transmission. A simple touch of the button on the handlebar and you enter into a completely different world. Three separate mappings for the totally automatic transmission and a sequential shift with 7 gears make it easy to find the best-adapted configuration for the riding conditions.  Read More

December 6, 2006 The Lamborghini Gallardo Police car we wrote up in 2004 holds the title for the world’s fastest police car in actual use – it prowls the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway at speeds up to 309 km/h in the hands of the Polizia di Stato (Italian State Police) but when the Brabus CLS V12 S Rocket appeared at the Essen Motor Show a few days ago, the bar got raised by some margin. In June this year German Performance Vehicle Manufacturer Brabus set a record for the world’s fastest sedan car when its 348,000-euro (US$437,575) Mercedes CLS-based Brabus Rocket, clocked an incredible 362.4 km/h at the famed Nardo test facility in Southern Italy. The new police vehicle on show in Essen is destined for police forces that need to be able to run down autobahn abusers. Throw in the specialist communications equipment and we doubt you’ll get much change from half a million US dollars, but you will be the fastest policeman in the world.  Read More

July 12, 2006 Born from a military vehicle and the most prominent symbol of America's global military dominance, the HUMMER does not require more testosterone, but hey, boys will be boys. German automotive performance house Geiger specialises in American cars and outrageous one-offs, and is hence accustomed to unusual customer requests. So the request from a Texas sheriff to turn his personal emergency vehicle into the world’s fastest police HUMMER represented a special challenge and one which was approached with pride. The resultant vehicle is now bound for the U.S.A and sports a supercharged 7.0-liter engine with 700 hp (515 kW). As if that’s not enough, the black and white HUMMER H2 has a brutal torque output which peaks at 904 Nm at 4,260 rpm and surely slingshots the beastie to its electronically-limited top speed of 250 km/h. That should be fast enough for the sheriff to catch just about any speedster ... though we suspect few people would wish to have this sheriff on their case.  Read More

One of the measures of sporting performance that’s rarely used but highly relevant when measuring extreme automotive performance is the zero to 100mph and back to zero time. It incorporates both acceleration to a suitably ridiculous speed and braking from that speed to the safety of standstill again and it’s more of a guide to sporting prowess than simple standing start quarter mile times. Each year in the U.K., the world’s oldest motoring magazine runs the fastest cars against each other using this test and this year there has been a new entrant which has wiped the floor with all others. Not surprisingly, given that it has a 987bhp 16-cylinder engine and a top speed of 400 kmh, the UKP 880,000 Bugatti Veyron has blitzed everything else on four wheels by a massive margin – what is surprising is that it has also blitzed a credible representative of the fastest of the two wheel brigade as well, managing to beat a Suzuki GSX-R1000 superbike by nearly a full second. Read on for the complete list of the times by 25 of the world’s fastest cars, from the 14th placed UKP79,995 Aston Martin V8 Vantage to the second-placed UKP34,995 Ariel Atom.  Read More