The November 2002 TOP500 in Germany

Munich 20 November 2002 Germany improved the number of entries in the list from 64 in June to now 71. Additionally, the aggregated Rmax grew by 27% from 20.1 Tflop/s to 25.5 Tflop/s this November. This was caused by several new big machines in research and industry. Some of the new trends are discussed in this article. (Uwe Harms)

Concerning the number of installations, Germany grew by 11% from 64 in June to 71 now - this makes 14% of the 500 listed machines. Although the Rmax performance improvement was 27% up to 25.5 TeraFlop/s, the percentage concerning the aggregated Top500 performance shrank from 9.1 to 8.7% in November.

The Vendors

The good news, Cray is still active in Germany with 6 good old T3Es, some of them will be switched off. They represent 2.4 Tflop/s (9%). Last June, IBM was the leader of the gang with 26 systems and 8.5 Tflop/s. As the entry performance jumped up to 195.6 GigaFlop/s, all the Regattas with up to 88 processors and the Power3 systems with up to 168 processors left the list. Thus IBM fell on Rank 3 with 15 machines but gained Rank 1 in performance with 9 TeraFlop/s (36%). The new number 1 is Sun Microsystems with 23 machines and 4.7 TeraFlop/s (18%) (10 machines and 1.9 TeraFlop/s in June), sharply hunted by Hewlett-Packard with 22 computers and 5.4 TeraFlop/s (21%) (18 machines and 4 Tflop/s in June), which gave HP Rank 2 concerning the performance. Interestingly, there is no Alpha-based system in Germany. Hewlett-Packard sold its machines only in industry, there are none in academia and research. Now, there are two Megware systems, 1 TeraFlop/s (4%), one Hitachi, 1.7 Tflop/s (6%), one NEC 1 TeraFlop/s (4%), and a self-made Cluster with .2 TeraFlop/s.

Within the German Top 5, IBM is represented by 4 computers, within the Top 10, IBM has 6 computers. Other vendors are Hitachi with its SR-8000, Megware in Heidelberg, and the Cray at Wetterdienst.

Top German Supercomputers

This November, the fastest German supercomputer gained rank 21. It is the Max-Planck Computer installed in Garching near Munich. The IBM p690 Turbo with 752 Power 4 CPUs, 1.3 GHz, got a Linpack performance of 2 TeraFlop/s having a peak performance of 3.9 TeraFlop/s. This June, the LRZ Hitachi SR 8000 computer reached rank 14, now in November only rank 27 with 1.7 TeraFlop/s. Thus the supercomputers in the Munich area represent 14% of the total German Linpack performance. The next systems are IBMs too, the German Weather Service rank 31 with an SP Power3, 1.4 TeraFlop/s, and the HLRN machines in Hannover and Berlin, rank 44 and 45 with 1 TeraFlop/s, p690, 1.3 GHz. These are the only Linpack TeraFlop/s machines in Germany, concerning the peak performance there are seven computers.

The Architectures

From June, the number of constellations, systems with fat compute nodes, grew from 26 and 5.6 Tflop/s to now 45 and 10 Tflop/s. On the MPP side Germany now has 21 computers with a Linpack performance of 12.9 Tflop/s. Following the definition in the Top500, there are now 4 clusters with 1.5 Tflop/s and one SMP with 1 TeraFlop/s, the new NEC machine in Hamburg.

Supercomputer Usage

There are only seven (10%) computers in research, having a total of 6 Tflop/s (24%), compared to the June list an improvement of 1.6 Tflop/s. The academic centres have 13 (18%) computers and 6.8 Tflop/s (27%), only a small improvement of .8 TeraFlop/s. Industry took the greatest part of the cake, 42 (59%) machines with 12.3 Tflop/s (48%). The percentage figures are nearly identical with the June list. The performance improvement summed up to 2.8 Tflop/s. Comparing these figures with the world-wide percentage, research in Germany falls back, 52.5% of the worldwide Linpack performance is dedicated to research. Academic centres have more power than the worldwide, which is only 19.6%. The same is true for industry, worldwide only 20.6%. The German industry has 20% of the worldwide industrial power of 60.3 Tflop/s.

Supercomputers in Research

Four of the seven supercomputers are old Cray T3E veterans, installed in 1996/1997 and some of them upgraded in 1999, representing 28% of the Linpack performance. Two new machines have been installed and additionally upgraded this year. In June, the IBM p690 had 208 processors, now 752 processors. The NEC SX-6 with 128 processors at the German Climate Research Centre, Hamburg, will be extended next year too. Further, the John von Neumann Institute of Computing announced that it will install an IBM p690 with a peak performance of 5.8 Tflop/s. This will add another 3 TeraFlop/s to the research area. The Crays will be switched off soon.

Supercomputers in Academia

The first three computers, the Hitachi in Munich and the two IBMs, Berlin and Hannover, represent 55% of the total academic performance. Here, IBM is dominating the list with 5 p690 systems, followed by Sun Microsystems 3 computers, the two Megware and one self-made cluster and an old Cray T3E. It will be interesting when the two HLRN machines in Berlin and Hannover will be listed as one system in the Top500.

Supercomputers in Industry

Industry is one of the most impressive user of supercomputing in Germany. Out of the 49 machines 39 have been installed in 2002 and 25 after the release of the June Top500 list - within the last five months. Here too, IBM leads with the most powerful computers, rank 100 a p690 at EDS/Adam Opel with 192 processors and .6 TeraFlop/s, rank 103 Deutsche Telecom - Power3 528 processors, rank 111 a pharmaceutical company as well as rank 143 the Postbank, p690 176 processors.

In industry, Hewlett-Packard is dominating with 21 SuperDome, mostly 128 processor systems and 5.2 Tflop/s, 42% of industry performance. Sun follows with 19 Sun Fire 15K with 144 processors and 3.7 TeraFlop/s, 30% of industry performance. Number 3 is IBM, 8 computers with 3 TeraFlop/s, 24%. One of the IBM systems is a Netfinity cluster consisting of 512 Pentium III, 1.26 GHz and Ethernet connection.

Hewlett-Packard sold 10 SuperDomes with 128 processors to BMW. A more diverse picture gives Sun Microsystems, 5 systems within DaimlerChrysler, 4 Deutsche Bank, 3 Commerzbank, 4 telecommunication, and one Sun Fire to BMW.

It is interesting to observe that 19 Hewlett-Packard systems, only interrupted by two IBMs, follow directly one after another. The same happens with Sun, all the Sun Fires are listed after another. This shows that industrial customers chose standard solutions, in the case of HP mostly SuperDomes with 128 processors, on the Sun side all Sun Fire 15K with 144 processors.

Uwe Harms

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