TOP500 List Highlights - November 2003

All changes are from June 2003 to November 2003:

Highlights from the Top 10:

• The Earth Simulator, built by NEC, remains the unchallenged #1.
• ASCI Q at Los Alamos is still #2 at 13.88 TFlop/s.
• The third system ever to exceed the 10 TFflop/s mark is Virgina Tech's X measured at 10.28 TFlop/s. This cluster is built with the Apple G5 as building blocks and is often referred to as the 'SuperMac' in media reports. It uses a Mellanox network based on the new Infinband technology as interconnect.
• The fourth system is also a cluster. The Tungsten cluster at NCSA is a Dell PowerEdge-based system using a Myrinet interconnect. It just missed the 10 TFlop/s mark with a measured 9.82 TFlop/s.
• The list of clusters in the TOP10 continues with the upgraded Itanium2-based Hewlett-Packard system, located at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which uses a Quadrics interconnect.
• #6 is the first system in the TOP500 based on AMD's Opteron chip. It was installed by Linux Networx at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and also uses a Myrinet interconnect.
• The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown impressively to seven systems. The Earth Simulator and the two IBM SP systems at Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley national labs are the other three systems.
• With the exception of the leading Earth Simulator, all other TOP10 systems are installed in the U.S.
• The performance of the #10 system jumped to 6.6 TFlop/s.

General highlights from the Top 500:

• The number of systems exceeding the 1 TFflop/s mark running the Linpack benchmark jumped from 59 to 131.
• The last system on the newest list, with 403.4 GFlops/s, was listed at position 290 on the last TOP500 just six month ago. This indicates a turnover rate well above average.
• Total accumulated performance exceeded the level of half a petaflop. It is now 528 TFlop/s, compared to 375 TFlop/s six month ago.
• Entry level is now 403.4 GFlop/s, compared to 245.1 GFlop/s six month ago.
• The entry point for the top 100 moved from 708 GFlop/s to 1.142 TFlop/s.
• A total of 189 systems are now using Intel processors. Six months ago there were 119 Intel-based systems on the list and one year ago only 56.
• 208 systems are now labeled as clusters, up from 149. This makes clustered systems the most common architecture in the TOP500.
• IBM is still leading the list with respect to the total installed performance - and increased its share to 35.4 percent --- up from 31.8 percent one year ago and 34.9 percent 6 months ago. HP is second in installed performance with 22.7 percent and NEC is third with 8.7 percent.
• With respect to the number of systems, Hewlett-Packard topped IBM again by a small margin. HP is at 165 systems (up from 159) and IBM is at 159 systems (up one system) installed. SGI is again third with 41 systems, down from 54.
• No other manufacturer is able to capture more than 6 percent in any category.
• The Cray X1 system appears on the list with 10 installations, with the largest X1 listed at #19.