The TOP500 - a German viewHeidelberg 20 jun 2002 The presentation of the Top500 June 2002 opened the way to analyse the German situation, as since the beginning of this year several new systems have been installed in research and academia, as well as extended Leibniz-Rechenzentrum in Munich.
Compared to the worldwide situation, Germany grew from 59 (12%) systems in November 2001 to 64 (13%) this spring. Although the Rmax grew from 12 TFlop/s (9%) last November to 20 TFlop/s (9%), an increase of 67%.
Germany is still ahead of France, 23 systems and .9 TFlop/s, a factor of nearly 3 in computers and 2 in Rmax. Without the CEA machine and its 4 TFlop/s the situation would be worse for France. Compared to the United Kingdom, Germany gains as factor of 1.7 in installed systems and Rmax. Although Japan is behind in computers, 20%, the Earth Simulator pushes Japan dramatically forward, a factor of 2.8 compared to Germany. Without the Earth Simulator, the Rmax would nearly be identical. The USA/Canada have 3.7 times more computers and 5 times more computing power, Rmax.
This year the fastest computer in Germany is ranked 14, the Hitachi SR8000 at Leibnizrechenzentrum of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Hitachi added another 56 nodes to a total of 168 nodes. With 8/9 RISC processors, each gets an Rmax of 1.653 TFlop/s, 82% of peak. It overtook the last years giant, the IBM at Deutscher Wetterdienst with 1.293 TFlop/s, 67% of peak. It is ranked number 17. Number 3 is the only European built computer by Chemnitz based Megware, University Heidelberg - IWR, with .825 TFlop/s. It is the fastest PC-based system in the world. It is ranked number 35 and uses 512 AMD processors, 1.4 GHz. The peak performance is 1.43 TFlop/s, Rmax is 58% of that.
IBM leads in Germany with 26 computers. The Wetterdienst is followed by the IBMs at HLRN, one machine in Berlin, the other in Hannover. The Max-Planck-System is not so strong, as they have to wait for their new building in Garching, where the bid system will be installed. Years ago the people told you that the systems will be smaller. But with the increase of processors in the computer centres it is no longer true. The same as in Garching will happen in Jülich, a new, to be built machine room. The second with 18 computers is Hewlett-Packard with medium sized systems. They start at rank 189. Nearly all the computers are installed in industry, mostly automotive. The third is Sun Microsystems with 9 computers.
The distribution of the different areas is 9 computers in research, 11%, 12 in universities, 19%, 42 in industry, 66%, and 1 governmental computer, 2%. Research sums up to 4.4 TFlop/s, 22%, Universities about 6 TFlop/s, 30%, industry 9.5 TFlop/s, 47%, and governmental .196 TFlop/s, 1%. It is always difficult to select the academic and the industrial part of the Stuttgart HWW.
The new computers in HLRN, Stuttgart, and Jülich are extremely necessary, as Max-Planck operates an old Cray T3E from 1997, and HWW/University Stuttgart and Research Centre Jülich use a Cray T3E installen in 1996 - 6 years in operation but still in the Top500, on rank 134 and 237 respectively.
Uwe Harms |
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