Highlights - June 2020

This is the 55th edition of the TOP500.

After a few editions with very little new entries in the Top10 we have a new #1 and a total of 4 new systems:

  • Supercomputer Fugaku, a system based on Fujitsu’s custom ARM A64FX processor is the new #1. It is installed at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Kobe, Japan, the location of the former K-Computer. It was developed by Fujitsu in close collaboration with Riken and uses Fujitsu’s Tofu D interconnect to transfer data between nodes.

    It achieved a spectacular 416 Pflop/s on the HPL benchmark easily exceeding the old #1 Summit by 2.8x. In single or half precision (16-bit), which are often used in machine learning and AI applications, it’s peak performance is actually above 1,000 PFlop/s (= 1 Exaflop/s) and because of this, it is often introduced as the first ‘Exascale’ supercomputer.

  • HPC5 at #6 is the second new system. It is a PowerEdge system build by Dell installed by the Italian company Eni S.p.A. and is now the most powerful system in Europe. It achieves its performance of 35.5 Pflop/s by using NVIDIA Tesla V100 as accelerators and Mellanox HDR Infiniband as network.

  • Selene at #7 is an NVIDIA DGX A100 SuperPOD installed in house at NVIDIA in the USA. Naturally it uses the new NVIDIA Ampere A100 for acceleration and a Mellanox HDR Infiniband as network as well to achieve it’s 27.6 Pflop/s.

  • Marconi-100 at #9 is the second Italian system in the Top10. It is an IBM Power System AC922 based on IBM POWER9 processors, Nvidia Volta V100 accelerators, and a Dual-rail Mellanox EDR Infiniband. The system is installed at the Italian research center CINECA and achieved 21.6 Pflop/s.

Highlights from the Top 10

Highlights from the List

  • A total of 146 systems on the list are using accelerator/co-processor technology, up from 145 six months ago. 1 of these use NVIDIA Ampere chips, 0 use 18, and 107 systems with NVIDIA Volta.

  • Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share (94.20 percent) of TOP500 systems.

  • We have incorporated the HPCG benchmark results into the Top500 list to provide a more balanced look at performance.

  • Supercomputer Fugaku takes the leadership followed by the 2 top DOE systems Sierra and Summit in the #2 and #3 spots with reespect to HPCG performance.

  • Japanese systems continue to take leading roles in the Green500 and take the first spot with MN-3, a Preferred Networks system with 21.1 GFlops/watts.

  • The entry level to the list moved up to the 1.23 Pflop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark.

  • The last system on the newest list was listed at position 450 in the previous TOP500.

  • Total combined performance of all 500 exceeded the Exaflop barrier with now 2.21 exaflop/s (Eflop/s) up from 1.65 exaflop/s (Eflop/s) 6 months ago.

  • The entry point for the TOP100 increased to 2.80 Pflop/s.

  • The average concurrency level in the TOP500 is 142,320 cores per system up from 126,308 six months ago.

General Trends

Installations by countries/regions:

TOP 10 HPC manufacturer:

TOP 10 Interconnect Technologies:

TOP 10 Processor Technologies:

Green500

HPCG Results

About the TOP500 List

The first version of what became today’s TOP500 list started as an exercise for a small conference in Germany in June 1993. Out of curiosity, the authors decided to revisit the list in November 1993 to see how things had changed. About that time they realized they might be onto something and decided to continue compiling the list, which is now a much-anticipated, much-watched and much-debated twice-yearly event.