"MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; & BERKELEY, Calif. – In what has become a much-anticipated event in the world of high-performance computing, the 22nd edition of the “TOP500” list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was released today (November 16, 2003).
The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC and installed last year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan.
The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown impressively to seven systems. These systems are built with workstations or PCs as building blocks and often connected by special high-speed internal networks. The number of clusters in the full TOP500 grew also again strongly, now totaling 208 systems up from 149 six months ago. This makes clustered systems the most common computer architecture seen in the TOP500. The importance of this market can also be seen by the fact that most manufacturers are now active in this market segment.
The new TOP500 list, as well as the former lists, can be found on the Web at http://www.top500.org/.
The number two position is again held by the ASCI Q system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. ASCI Q was built by Hewlett-Packard and is based on the AlphaServer SC computer system. With 13.88 Tflop/s, it was the second system ever to exceed the 10 Tflop/s mark.
The third system ever to exceed the 10 TFflop/s mark is Virgina Tech's X Cluster Institute measured at 10.28 TFlop/s. This cluster is built with the Apple G5 as building blocks. 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 based on the Dell PowerEdge system with its Pentium4 Xeon processor and uses a Myrinet interconnect. It missed the 10 TFlop/s mark by only a tiny margin 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. The sixth largest system 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 TOP10 finishes with the IBM SP systems at two other DOE national laboratories (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) ahead of another Pentium4 Xeon-based cluster also at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Gaining entry into the top 10 positions on the new list now requires achieving a Linpack performance of at least 6.6 Tflop/s."
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone." - Bjarne Stroustrup
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
