Again the USA reinforces TOP500 dominance

Orlando, 10 November 98 The USA have strengthened their position in the November 5 1998 list of the worlds most powerful supercomputers. USA/Canada holds 298 of the 500 positions, as compared to 286 half a year ago. Europe is up to 120 from 114 while Japan did fall back to 69 from 83. Americans still buy USA made supercomputers, Japanese buy American and Japanese made machines, but more Japanese than US made. Europe's distribution of machines matches the sales world wide the vendors made, showing the Old Continent does not have a preference.

Some 59% of the world's 500 fastest machines can be found in the USA, Europe houses 24% of the machines, Japan 14% and the other continents 3%.


Distribution of TOP500 machines over the continents.


Distribution of TOP500 machines over the continents compared to June 1998.

Measures in performance, the yardstick is Rmax measured in Gflop/s, the machines in USA are a bit more powerful than in Japan: 13% of the world's performance is located in Japan, 62% of the power can be found in USA supercomputers sites. Europe has 24%, which matches the number of machines. Worldwide, the total installed power is nearly 30 Tflop/s compared to 22 Tflop/s half a year ago.


In the USA, almost no Japanese machines are to be found. Europe buys machines from both Japanese and American vendors.

Ad Emmen