TOP500 List Highlights - June 2004

All changes are from November 2003 to June 2004:

Highlights from the Top 10:

• The Earth Simulator, built by NEC, remains the #1.

• There are quite a few changes in the top 10 and the top500 in general:

• A new #2 system - Thunder an Intel Itanium2 based cluster system at LLNL

• At #4 and #8 are the prototypes for the upcoming IBM BlueGene/L system, the prototypes are a joint development of LLNL and IBM and are currently at IBM.

  The final system will be installed at LLNL and is expected to replace the EarthSimulator by June 2005 or even as early as the end of 2004

• The #6 system is a new IBM p690 system with 1.9 GHz Power4+ processors. The first one worldwide. It is installed at the ECMWF in UK and brings Europe back into the top 10. It also reflects the fact that UK for the first time in a long time surpassed Germany as the European country with the most TOP500 systems - 36 over 34.

• #7 is a second Japanese system build by Fujitsu and installed at RIKEN. It is special as it is a heterogeneous cluster with nodes of different capabilities which make it more challenging to achieve good performance.

  It is the first such system that high in the top500.

• #10 is the first Chinese system ever to enter the top10. It is also assembled by a Chinese intergrator - Dawning. It is based on AMD's Opteron chip and LA based Myricom's Myrinet interconnect network.

• The performance of the #10 system jumped to 8.06 up from 6.6 TF/s.

• 8 TF/s are not enough any more to enter the top10. The Linux Networx made Opteron based cluster at Los Alamos with 8.05 TF/s only made #11

• The 'SuperMac' at Virginia Tech, which made a very impressive debut 6 month ago is off the list. At least temporarily. VT is replacing hardware and the new hardware was not in place for this TOP500 list.

General highlights from the Top 500:

• The number of systems exceeding the 1 TFflop/s mark on the Linpack jump from 130, up to 242 - almost half the list.

• The last system on the list with 624 GF/s GF/s was listed at position 242 in the last TOP500 just six month ago. This marks a record turn-over rate in the 11 year history of the TOP500.

• Total accumulated performance is approaching the level of a Petaflop/s. It is now 813 TFlop/s, compared to 528 TFlop/s six month ago.

• Entry level is now 624.3 GF/s, compared to 403.4 GF/s six month ago.

• The entry point for the top 100 moved from 1.142 TF/s to 1.922 TF/s.

• A total of 287 systems are now using Intel processors. 6 month ago there were 189 Intel based systems on the list and one year ago only 119.

• Second most common processor family are IBM Power processor (75 system) ahead of PA Risc processors (57) and AMD processors (34).

• 291 systems are now labeld as cluster, up from 208. This makes clustered systems the most common architecture in the TOP500.

• At present IBM and Hewlett-Packard sell the bulk of systems at all performance levels of the TOP500.

• IBM became clear leader in this edition of the TOP500 list with 44.80% of system and 50.12% of installed performance

• HP is second with 28% of systems and 18.5% of performance.

• No other manufacturer is able to capture more than 6% in any category.

• A new geographical trend which started the last few years emerges more cleary. The number of systems in Asian countries other than Japan is rising quite steadily.

  In this list Japan is listed with 34 systems and all other Asian countries accumulated an additional 55 systems. However Europe is still ahead of Asia with 124 systems installed.