Worlds Top 500 Super Computers Reviewed

MANNHEIM, Germany, BERKELEY, Calif., and KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—The 32nd edition of the intimately watched itemize of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers has meet been issued, with the 1.105 petaflop/s IBM supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory retentive on to the crowning blot it prototypal achieved in June 2008.

The Los Alamos system, nicknamed Roadrunner, was slightly enhanced since June and narrowly fended soured a contest by the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory titled Jaguar. The system, exclusive the ordinal to fortuity the petaflop/s barrier, posted a crowning action of 1.059 petaflop/s in streaming the Linpack criterion application. One petaflop/s represents digit quadrillion floating saucer dealings per second.

Both of the systems are at domestic laboratories operated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).  Seven of the crowning 10 systems on the newest TOP500 itemize are settled at DOE facilities. Nine of the crowning 10 supercomputers are settled in the United States. The most coercive grouping right the U.S. is the Chinese-built Dawning 5000A at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center. It is the maximal grouping which crapper be operated with Windows HPC 2008 operative system.

The TOP500 list, which is issued twice a year, module again be the person of a word at the SC08 word existence held Nov. 15-21 in Austin, Texas. Complete aggregation most the TOP500 itemize crapper be institute at: top500.org.

Just as the action levels hit accumulated dramatically, so hit the costs of streaming and chilling much super systems. To support set the forcefulness efficiency of supercomputers, the TOP500 itemize is today chase actualised noesis activity of supercomputers in conformable fashion. Not exclusive is it the most coercive supercomputer, but Roadrunner is also digit of the most forcefulness economical systems on the TOP500. Roadrunner is supported on the IBM QS22 blades which are shapely with modern versions of the processor in the Sony PlayStation 3. These nodes are adjoining with a artefact InfiniBand network.

Here are whatever another highlights from the Nov 2008 list:

• A amount of 379 systems (75.8 percent) are today using Intel processors. This is virtually aforementioned from sextet months past (375 systems, 75 percent). Intel continues to wage the processors for the maximal deal of TOP500 systems.
• The IBM Power processors and the AMD Opteron kinsfolk are nearly equal as ordinal most ordinary processor kinsfolk with 60 and 59 systems apiece (12 proportionality and 11.8 percent). Both had exclusive secondary changes from sextet months ago.
• Quad-core processor supported systems hit condemned over the TOP500 quite rapidly. Already 336 systems are using them. 153 systems are using dual-core processors, and exclusive quaternary systems ease ingest azygos set processors. Already heptad systems ingest IBMs modern Sony PlayStation 3 processor with figure cores.
• HP took over the advance in systems with 209 systems (41.8 percent) over IBM with 188 systems (37.6 percent).  IBM had 210 systems (42.0 percent) sextet months ago, compared to HP with 183 systems (36.6 percent). But IBM ease stays aweigh by coverall installed performance.

Highlights from the Rest of the Top 10:

• The No. 3 grouping titled clump is a newborn SGI Altix ICE grouping installed at NASA Ames in Moffett Field, Calif.., narrowly grabbing this blot with 487 teraflop/s.
• The No. 4 grouping is the IBM BlueGene/L grouping installed at DOE’s martyr suffragist National Laboratory (LLNL), with a Linpack action of 478.2 Tflop/s.
• At No. 5 is a newer edition of the aforementioned identify of IBM BlueGene/P grouping installed at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and it achieved 450.3 Tflop/s.
• The No. 6 grouping is installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas and fresh conventional faster processors. Nicknamed Ranger, it is shapely by Sun using SunBlade x6420servers and achieved 433.2 TFlop/s.
• The No. 7 system, titled Franklin, is the ordinal newborn Cray XT5 system. It is installed at DOE’s NERSC Center at the martyr metropolis National Laboratory and achieved 266.3 Tflop/s.
• The No. 8 grouping is a Cray XT4 grouping installed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It achieved a Linpack action of 205 Tflop/s.
• The No. 9 grouping is the large Sandia/Cray Red Storm system. It is installed at DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories and achieved 204.2 Teraflop/s.

General Highlights from the Top 500

• The entry take to the itemize touched up to the 12.64 Tflop/s evaluation on the Linpack benchmark, compared to 9.0 Tflop/s sextet months ago.
• The terminal grouping on the underway itemize would hit been traded at function 267 in the preceding TOP500 meet sextet months ago.
• Total compounded action of every 500 systems has grown to 16.95 Pflop/s, compared to 11.7 Pflop/s sextet months past and 6.97 Pflop/s digit assemblage ago.
• The U.S. is understandably the directive consumer of HPC systems with 291 of the 500 systems (up from 257). The dweller deal (151 systems – downbound from 184) is sinking downbound after having risen for whatever time, but is ease substantially large then the continent deal (unchanged at 47 systems).
• Dominant countries in aggregation are Nihon with 18 systems (down from 22), China with 16 systems (up from 12), Bharat with 8 systems (up from 6).
• In Europe, UK relic the No. 1 with 45 systems (53 sextet months ago). FRG lapse steeply but is ease in the No. 2 blot with 24 systems (46 sextet months ago).

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