[info] top500 for 11/07 released

Tue Nov 13 09:40:25 UTC 2007

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the majestic semilog plots on the site

Bits belowed cnped from 
http://www.top500.org/blog/2007/11/09/30th_edition_top500_list_world_s_fastest_supercomputers_released_big_turnover_among_top_10_systems
)

30th Edition of TOP500 List of World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released,
Big Turnover Among the Top 10 Systems
Fri, 2007-11-09 00:56 |

 * nov07
 * top500

MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; & BERKELEY, Calif. - The
twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, already
a closely watched event in the world of high performance computing, is
expected to become an even hotter topic of discussion as the latest list
shows five new entrants in the Top 10, which includes sites in the
United States, Germany, India and Sweden. The 30th edition of the TOP500
list was released today (Nov. 12, 2007) at SC07, the international
conference on high performance computing, networking, storage and
analysis, in Reno, Nevada.

The Top 10 shows five new and one substantially upgraded system with
five of these changes placing at the top five positions. The new TOP500
list, as well as the previous 29 lists, can be found on the Web at
http://www.top500.org/.

The No. 1 position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint
development of IBM and the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA) and installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Although BlueGene/L has
occupied the No. 1 position since November 2004, the current system has
been significantly expanded and now achieves a Linpack benchmark
performance of now 478.2 TFop/s ("teraflops" or trillions of
calculations per second), compared to 280.6 TFlop/s six months ago
before its upgrade.

At No. 2 is a brand-new first installation of a newer version of the
same type of IBM system. It is a BlueGene/P system installed in Germany
at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) and it achieved performance of
167.3 TFlop/s.

The No. 3 system is not only new, but also the first system for a new
supercomputing center, the New Mexico Computing Applications Center
(NMCAC) in Rio Rancho, N.M. The system, built by SGI and based on the
Altix ICE 8200 model, posted a speed of 126.9 TFlop/s.

For the first time ever, India placed a system in the Top 10. The
Computational Research Laboratories, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata
Sons Ltd. in Pune, India, installed a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform
3000 BL460c system. They integrated this system with their own
innovative routing technology and achieved 117.9 TFlop/s performance.

The No.5 system is also a new Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000
BL460c system and installed at a Swedish government agency. It was
measured at 102.8 TFlop/s.

The last new system in the Top 10, placing No. 9, is a Cray XT4 system
installed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
(NERSC) at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was ranked
based on a Linpack performance of 85.4 TFlop/s.

For quite some time, IBM and Hewlett-Packard have sold the bulk of
systems at all performance levels of the TOP500. In the latest list, IBM
regained a solid lead in the total number of systems with 232 (46.4
percent) over HP with 166 systems (33.2 percent). IBM, which had been
ahead of HP since June 2004, lost the lead in the number of systems six
months ago with 38.4 percent (down from 47.2 percent one year ago),
compared to HP with 40.6 percent (up from 31.6 percent one year ago).

Here are some highlights from the latest list:

The entry level to the list - No. 500 - moved up to 5.9 TFlop/s, running
the Linpack benchmark, compared to 4.0 TFlop/s six months ago. The last
system on the 30th list would have been listed at position 255 in the
29th TOP500 just six months ago. This turnover rate is above average.

Total combined performance of all 500 systems has grown to 6.97 PFlop/s
(petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second) compared to 4.92
PFlop/s six months ago and 3.54 PFlop/s one year ago.

The entry point for the top 100 increased in six months from 9.29
TFlop/s to 12.97 TFlop/s.

Multi core processors are the dominant chip architecture. The most
impressive growth showed the number of systems using the Intel
Clovertown quad core chips which grew in six months from 19 to 102
systems. The majority of remaining systems uses dual core processors.

Other trends of interest:

A total of 354 systems (70.8 percent) now use Intel processors. This is
up from six months ago (289 systems, 57.8 percent) and represents the
largest share for Intel chips in the TOP500 ever. The AMD Opteron
family, which passed the IBM Power processors a year ago, remained the
second most common processor family with 78 systems (15.6 percent), down
from 105 systems (21 percent) six months ago. 61 systems (12.2 percent)
use IBM Power processors, down from 85 systems (17 percent) six months
ago.

A total of 406 systems are labeled as clusters, making this the most
common architecture in the TOP500 with a stable share of 81.2 percent.

Gigabit Ethernet is still the most-used internal system interconnect
technology (270 systems) due to its widespread use by industrial
customers, followed by InfiniBand technology with 121 systems.

The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 284 of the
500 systems. The European share (149 systems - up from 127) is still
rising and is again larger then the Asian share (58 - down from 72
systems).

Dominant countries in Asia are Japan with 20 systems (down from 23),
Taiwan with 11 (up from 10), China with 10 systems (down from 13), and
India with nine systems (up from eight).

In Europe, UK has established itself as the No. 1 with 48 systems (43
six months ago). Germany has to live with the No. 2 spot with 31 systems
(24 six months ago).

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim,
Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville.