Quadrics Top in Top 500 and IDC Rating

The November 2002 list shows three top computers within the first 5 sites using Quadrics QsNet as their system area network. Their combined Linpack performance, Rmax, sums up to 21 TFlop/s, the peak performance is nearly 33 TFlop/s. That means that these Quadrics systems reach a Linpack application performance of 65% of the peak. Within the Top10 this grows to 5 machines with a an aggregated Rmax of nearly 30 TFlop/s and a peak performance of 44 TFlop/s.

The fastest clusters, based on Hewlett-Packard Alpha processors, follow directly the NEC Earth Simulator and can be found on rank 2 and 3, the ASCI Q machines at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Their Rmax performance is 7.727 TFlop/s. Nr. 5 is an Intel Linux cluster based on Xeon 2.4 GHz with the Quadrics QsNet. Linux NetworX delivered it to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Nr. 6 and 7 are based on Alphas, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (Dual-Rail QsNet) and the French Atomic Authority (Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, CEA. Here the Rmax data are 4.5 and 4 TFlop/s respectively.

Hewlett-Packard delivered another two Itanium 2 based clusters with the Quadrics interconnect. The British Petroleum Houston, rank 42, and the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (Dual-Rail QsNet) on rank 61. Thus all the fast clusters use the high-speed Quadrics QsNet.

IDC Benchmark

IDC released their November 2002 Benchmark list. Here, because of its better processor and scaling rating, the IBM ASCI White lies ahead the Hewlett-Packard ASCI Q machine. In their table only one ASCI Q is listed, as they put only one of an identical machine in their ranking. Here the Pittsburgh and the CEA computer move forward to rank 4 and 5. Because of a lower processor rating the Linux NetworX machine fall back on rank 9. Thus IDC gives the same picture that Quadrics QsNet based clusters fall in the high-end category.