Top500 – For the first time since November 2009, a United States supercomputer sits atop the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers. Named Sequoia, the IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved an impressive 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 1,572,864 cores.
Fujitsu’s “K Computer” installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, is now the No. 2 system with 10.51 Pflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores. The K Computer held the No. 1 spot on the previous two lists.
The new Mira supercomputer, an IBM BlueGene/Q system at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, debuted at No. 3, with 8.15 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 786,432 cores. The other U.S. system in the Top 10 is the upgraded Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which was the top U.S. system on the previous list and now clocks in at No. 6.
Rank Site Computer 1 DOE/NNSA/LLNL USA Sequoia - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz, 2 RIKEN Japan K computer, SPARC64 VIIIfx 2.0GHz, Fujitsu 3 DOE/SC/Argonne USA Mira - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz 4 Leibniz Germany SuperMUC - iDataPlex DX360M4, Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.70GHz 5 Tianjin China Tianhe-1A - NUDT YH MPP, Xeon X5670 6C 2.93 GHz, NVIDIA 2050 NUDT 6 DOE/Oak Ridge USA Jaguar - Cray XK6, Opteron 6274 16C 2.200GHz, Cray Gemini interconnect, NVIDIA 2090 Cray Inc. 7 CINECA Italy Fermi - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, Custom IBM 8 Juelich Germany JuQUEEN - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, Custom IBM 9 CEA France Curie thin nodes - Bullx B510, Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.700GHz, Infiniband QDR Bull 10 Shenzhen China Nebulae - Dawning TC3600 Blade System, Xeon X5650 6C 2.66GHz, Infiniband QDR, NVIDIA 2050 Dawning
Top Countries
The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 253 of the 500 systems (down from 263). The European share (107 systems – up from 103) is still lower than the Asian share (121 systems – up from 118). Dominant countries in Asia are China with 68 systems (down from 74), Japan with 34 systems (up from 30). In Europe, UK, France, and Germany, are almost equal with 25, 22, and 20 respectively.
The top vendors
IBM kept its lead in systems and has now 213 systems (42.6 percent) compared to HP with 138 systems (27.6 percent). HP is slightly down from 141 systems (28.2 percent) seven months ago, compared to IBM with 223 systems (44.6 percent). In the system category, Cray, Appro, SGI and Bull follow with 5.4 percent, 3.6 percent, 3.2 percent, and 3.2 percent respectively.
IBM remains the clear leader in the TOP500 list in performance and considerably increased its share with 47.5 percent of installed total performance (up from 27.3 percent). HP is second with 10.2 percent down from 13.1 percent. Due to the impressive performance of the No. 1 K Computer, Fujitsu follows closely in the third spot with 9.9 percent, down from 14.7 percent. Cray follows in fourth place in this category with 8.9 percent, down from 14.3 percent.
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.