This is the 58th edition of the TOP500.
The only new entry in the Top10 at No. 10 is a Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 installed at Microsoft in the U.S. The machine achieved 30.05 Pflop/s on the HPL benchmark. This architecture is based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU with 80 G.B. memory and utilizing a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.
The only other change to the TOP10 was that the No. 5 system Perlmutter system at NERSC at the DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s which, however, did not change its position on the list.
Supercomputer Fugaku, a system based on Fujitsu’s custom ARM A64FX processor, remains at No. 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 co-developed in close partnership by Riken and Fujitsu and uses Fujitsu’s Tofu D interconnect to transfer data between nodes. It improved its HPL benchmark score to 442 Pflop/s, easily exceeding the No. 2 Summit by 3x. In single or further reduced precision, which are often used in machine learning and A.I. applications, its peak performance is actually above 1,000 PFlop/s (= 1 Exaflop/s). Because of this, it is often introduced as the first ‘Exascale’ supercomputer. Fugaku already demonstrated this new level of performance on the new HPL-AI benchmark with 2 Exaflops! https://www.r-ccs.riken.jp/en/
The new HPE/Cray/AMD build Frontier system, currently being installed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is widely expected to beat the Exa-scale barrier in full 64-bit floating point precision. However, it was not able to submit such a result before the deadline for this edition of the TOP500. Over the last year there were also reports about several Chinese systems reaching Exaflop level performance, however none of these systems submitted an HPL result to the TOP500.
Here a brief summary of the system in the Top10:
Fugaku remains the No. 1 system. It has 7,630,848 cores which allowed it to attain an HPL benchmark score of 442 Pflop/s. This puts it by 3x ahead of the No. 2 system in the list.
Summit, an IBM-built system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, USA, remains the fastest system in the U.S. at the No. 2 spot worldwide with a performance of 148.8 Pflop/s on the HPL benchmark, which is used to rank the TOP500 list. Summit has 4,356 nodes, each one housing two Power9 CPUs with 22 cores each and six NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs each with 80 streaming multiprocessors (SM). The nodes are linked together with a Mellanox dual-rail EDR InfiniBand network.
Sierra, a system at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA, USA is at No. 3. It’s architecture is very similar to the new #2 systems Summit. It is built with 4,320 nodes with two Power9 CPUs and four NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. Sierra achieved 94.6 Pflop/s.
Sunway TaihuLight, a system developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, which is in China's Jiangsu province is listed at the No. 4 position with 93 Pflop/s.
• Perlmutter at No. 5 was newly listed in the TOP10 in last June. It is based on the HPE Cray “Shasta” platform, and a heterogeneous system with AMD EPYC based nodes and 1536 NVIDIA A100 accelerated nodes. Perlmutter improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s
Selene now at No. 6 is an NVIDIA DGX A100 SuperPOD installed inhouse at NVIDIA in the USA. The system is based on AMD EPYC processor with NVIDIA A100 for acceleration and a Mellanox HDR InfiniBand as network and achieved 63.4 Pflop/s.
Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A), a system developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China is now listed as the No. 7 system with 61.4 Pflop/s.
A system called “JUWELS Booster Module” is the No. 8. The BullSequana system build by Atos is installed at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany. The system uses AMD EPYC processor with NVIDIA A100 for acceleration and a Mellanox HDR InfiniBand as network similar to the Selene System. This system is the most powerful system in Europe with 44.1 Pflop/s.
HPC5 at No. 9 is a PowerEdge system build by Dell installed by the Italien company Eni S.p.A.. It achieves a performance of 35.5 Pflop/s due to using NVIDIA Tesla V100 as accelerators and a Mellanox HDR InfiniBand as network.
• Voyager-EUS2, a Microsoft Azure system installed at Microsoft in the U.S., is the only new system in the TOP10. It achieved 30.05 Pflop/s and is listed at No. 10. This architecture is based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU with 80 G.B. memory and utilizing a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.
A total of 151 systems on the list are using accelerator/co-processor technology, up from 147 six months ago. 43 of these use NVIDIA Ampere chips, 84 use NVIDIA Volta, and 0 systems with 17.
Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share (81.60 percent) of TOP500 systems, down from 86.40 % six months ago. 73 (14.60 %) of the systems in the current list used AMD processors, up from 9.60 % six months ago.
Supercomputer Fugaku maintains the leadership followed by the 2 top DOE systems Sierra and Summit in the #2 and #3 spots with respect to HPCG performance.
The entry level to the list moved up to the 1.65 Pflop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark.
The last system on the newest list was listed at position 433 in the previous TOP500.
Total combined performance of all 500 exceeded the Exaflop barrier with now 3.04 exaflop/s (Eflop/s) up from 2.79 exaflop/s (Eflop/s) 6 months ago.
The entry point for the TOP100 increased to 4.79 Pflop/s.
The average concurrency level in the TOP500 is 162,520 cores per system up from 153,852 six months ago.
The system to claim the No. 1 spot for the Green500 was MN-3 from Preferred Networks in Japan. Relying on the MN-Core chip and an accelerator optimized for matrix arithmetic, this machine was able to achieve an incredible 39.38 gigaflops/watt power-efficiency. This machine provided a performance 29.7- gigaflops/watt on the last list, clearly showcasing some impressive improvement. It also enhanced its standing on the TOP500 list, moving from No. 337 to No. 302.
The new SSC-21 Scalable Module an HPE Apollo 6500 system installed at Samsung Electronics in South Korea achieved an impressive 33.98 gigaflops/watt. They did so by submitting an power optimized run of the HPL benchmark. It is listed at position 292 in the TOP500.
NVIDIA installed a new liquid cooled DGX A100 prototype system called Tethys. With a power optimized HPL run Tethys achieved 31.5 gigaflops/watt and garne red the No. 3 spot on the Green500. It is listed at position 296 in the TOP500.
Supercomputer Fugaku remains the leader on the HPCG benchmark with 16 PFlop/s.
The DOE systems Summit at ORNL remains at second positions with 2.93 HPCG-Pflop/s.
The third position was captured by the new Perlmutter system at NERSC/LBNL with 1.91 HPCG-Pflop/s.
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.