China’s Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin tops the most recent list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. The new top spot pushes the Cray-based “Jaguar” supercomputer down a spot to number two and in third place is another Chinese machine, Nebulae.
The Tianhe-1A system clocked a top speed of 2.57 petaflop/s, or quadrillions of calculations a second. Jaguar was some way behind with 1.75 petaflop/s and Nebulae clocked 1.27 petaflop/s for its third spot.
Of the top 10 systems seven produced performances above 1 petaflop/s. Even more surprisingly, five of the top 10 systems are making their first appearance in the list.
Geographically, five of the top ten supercomputers are based in the United States. The other five spots are held by China, Japan, France and Germany.
Graphics to the fore
The increasing use of graphics processors in supercomputing is now starting to make itself felt. Both of the top Chinese machines as well as Japan’s Tsubame 2.0 (in fourth place) make extensive use of Nvidia GPUs (graphical processing units) to squeeze out more performance.
In total 17 of the Top500 supercomputers use GPUs as accelerators. Six of those use the Cell processor, ten use Nvidia chips and one uses ATI Radeon chips.
Global shift
Traditionally the US has dominated the list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers but there is a gradual shift taking place which is seeing countries such as China and Japan starting to become major players.
China now has 42 systems on the Top500 list, making it the number two country behind the US.
The US still has 275 systems in the Top500 list but this is down from 282 in June this year. European countries are listed 124 times (down from 144) and Asia now has 84 systems listed, up from 57.
Maker’s boasting rights
Long-time supercomputer maker, Cray, is now in second place again, behind IBM in the manufacturers’ charts. Intel still dominates the high-end processor market with 398 systems, although this is down from 406 systems six months ago. AMD’s Opteron family follows with 57 systems, up from 47.
The entry level for the Top500 list increased over the past six months to 31.1 teraflop/s. Six months ago 24.7 Tflop/s was enough to be included in the Top500 list.
Africa no longer included
While countries such as China and Japan have been increasing their presence on the Top500 list, Africa has lost its only foothold on the list in the most recent update.
In the June 2010 list South Africa’s Tsessebe system was listed at position 461. With the release of the November edition of the Top500 list, Tsessebe is no longer among the world’s 500 biggest supercomputers.
China tops in supercomputers, Africa not << Comments and views
Loading ...
