TOP500
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The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known (that is, unclassified) computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on [HPL], a portable implementation of the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark for distributed-memory computers.
The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The list is updated twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputer Conference in June, the second one is presented in November at the IEEE Super Computer Conference in the USA.
The data on TOP500 was originally copied from the "List of the world's most powerful computing sites", which had been started six months earlier in January 1993 as a not for profit service. TOP500 never was as accurate, up-to-date, unbiased or detailed as the "List", but due to significant corporate sponsorship became used in various marketing materials. After ten years the "List" closed down due to the disheartening lack of recognition.
Current List (June 2006)
The following table gives the Top 10 positions of the 27th TOP500 List released during the 21st International Supercomputer Conference (ISC|06), June 27-30, 2006 in Dresden, Germany.
| Rank | Site/Country/Year | Computer/Processors/Manufacturer | Rmax/Rpeak (GFlops) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory United States/2005 |
BlueGene/L eServer Blue Gene Solution / 131072 (POWER) IBM |
280600/367000 |
| 2 | IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center United States/2005 |
BGW eServer Blue Gene Solution / 40960 (POWER) IBM |
91290/114688 |
| 3 | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory United States/2005 |
ASC Purple eServer pSeries p5 575 1.9 GHz / 10240 (POWER) IBM |
63390/77824 |
| 4 | NASA Ames Research Center United States/2004 |
Columbia SGI Altix 1.5 GHz, Voltaire Infiniband / 10160 (Itanium) SGI |
51870/60960 |
| 5 | Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique France/2006 |
Tera-10 NovaScale 5160 Quadrics 1.6 GHz / 8704 (Itanium2) Bull SA |
42900/55705.6 |
| 6 | Sandia National Laboratories United States/2005 |
Thunderbird PowerEdge 1850 3.6 GHz, Infiniband / 8000 (Xeon) Dell |
38270/60960 |
| 7 | GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan/2006 |
TSUBAME Grid Cluster Sun Fire X64 Cluster, 2.4/2.6 GHz, Infiniband / 10368 (Opteron) NEC/Sun |
38180/49868.8 |
| 8 | Forschungszentrum Juelich Germany/2006 |
JUBL eServer Blue Gene Solution / 16384 (POWER) IBM |
37330/45875 |
| 9 | Sandia National Laboratories United States/2005 |
Red Storm Red Storm Cray XT3, 2.0 GHz / 10160 (Opteron) Cray Inc. |
36190/43520 |
| 10 | The Earth Simulator Center Japan/2002 |
Earth Simulator / 5120 (NEC) NEC |
35860/40960 |
Highlights from the Top 10
Taken from the official TOP500 site:
- Unchallenged leader remains the DOE's IBM BlueGene/L system, installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). With 280.6 TFlop/s on the Linpack benchmark it is still the only system ever to exceed the 100 TFlop/s mark.
- Changes in the TOP10 showed three interesting newcomers, all outside the U.S., and one system upgrade.
- The No. 3 ASC Purple system at LLNL, also built by IBM but based on the pSeries 575 servers, was slightly upgraded and reaches now 75.76 TFlop/s.
- No. 7 is now occupied by the largest system in Japan, a cluster integrated by NEC based on Sun Fire x64 with Opteron processors and an InfiniBand interconnect, installed at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
- For the first time in the history of the TOP500 project (since 1993), the top Japanese system is not manufactured in Japan itself.
General highlights from the Top 500 since the last edition
Taken from the official TOP500 site:
- The entry level to the list moved up to the 2.026 TFlop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark, compared to 1.646 TFlop/s six months ago.
- The last system on the newest list was listed at position 341 in the last TOP500 just six months ago. This is a medium turnover rate for the TOP500.
- Total accumulated performance has grown to 2.79 PFlop/s, compared to 2.30 PFlop/s six months ago and 1.69 PFlop/s one year ago.
- The entry point for the top 100 increased in six months from 3.98 TFlop/s to 4.71 TFlop/s.
External links
- http://www.top500.org/
- http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/hpl/
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