The new list of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world, released today by Top500.org, illustrates the rapid changes that are taking place in the high-performance computing market. Five new systems debuted in the top 10, and more than 200 systems got bumped from the previous list released about six months ago in November 2004.
Even with the changes, IBM strengthened its position at the top of the list. It placed six systems in the top 10 – five of which are Blue Gene systems.
At the top of the list is the Blue Gene/L system installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The system placed number one on the previous list in November, but has since doubled in size and increased in power. Using the Linpack benchmark, which is applied to all the systems on the list, the LLNL system is benchmarked at 136.8 TeraFLOPS (136.8 trillion operations per second).
A new Blue Gene system recently installed at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center placed number two on the list with a benchmarked performance of 91.29 TeraFLOPS.
IBM systems also placed 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th among the top 10. All told, five Blue Gene systems and one IBM cluster based on PowerPC processors placed in the top 10.
Life scientists will also recognize some other commonly used systems made it into the top 10. For example, an SGI Altix system installed at NASA’s Ames Research Center is ranked number three, benchmarking at 51.87 TeraFLOPS. This system debuted at number two in the previous list.
And a Cray XT3 system, dubbed the Red Storm, that is installed at the Sandia National Laboratories ranks number ten. The system is benchmarked at 15.25 TeraFLOPS.
System Trends
A common feature of the Top 500 list is the rapid turnover from list to list.
For instance, the last system on the current list would have been ranked 299 on the previous list released in November 2004. So more than 200 systems that made the previous list are bumped from this list.
In fact, the minimum performance level to get on the list has increased significantly. It now takes a benchmarked performance of 1.166 TeraFLOPS to make the list. That is up from the 850 GigaFLOPS (850 billion operations per second) entry level on the previous list.
Even with the rapid turnover, some things remain the same. For instance, the same manufacturers supply the majority of the systems. Specifically, IBM, HP, and SGI, which were prominent in past lists, dominate the current list. They respectively supply 51.8 percent, 26.2 percent, and 5 percent of the Top 500 systems.
Other manufacturers who supply systems in the life sciences are also represented on the list. For instance, besides the Red Storm system in the number 10 slot, Cray has about a half dozen other systems on the list.
Apple is also represented with the System X supercomputer at Virginia Tech. The system is a 1,100-node Apple Xserve cluster built by Virginia Tech and is ranked number 14 with a benchmark of 12.25 TeraFLOPS. When System X first debuted in November 2003 it benchmarked a bit lower (10.28 TeraFLOPS) and was rated the third most powerful computer in the world at that time.
Another well-known life science high-performance computing manufacturer on the list is Linux Networx. It has several systems on the list and, notably, a couple of the systems are the most powerful AMD Opteron-based clusters in the world.
Other noteworthy points about the list are:
- Gigabit Ethernet has become the most commonly used interconnection technology. In this list, 212 (42.4 percent) of the systems use Gigabit Ethernet while 141 (28.2 percent) use Myrinet technology. That is a shift from the past list here Myrinet was used in 190 (38 percent) of the systems and Gigabit Ethernet was used in 180 (36 percent) of the Top 500 systems.
- The total combined performance of the 500 systems on the new list is 1.69 PetaFLOPS (1.69 quadrillion operations per second). That’s up from 1.127 PetaFLOPS with the previous list.
- The last system on this list has about the same compute power as all 500 systems combined on the first list that was released in June 1993.
- Clusters dominate the list; 304 of the systems are clusters.
- Intel is the dominant processor supplier; 333 of the systems use Intel processors (up from 320 on the last list).