The most important of those "small" companies is California Digital Corporation who put together the Red Storm machine at Sandia that includes fast Quadrics switches. This machine, in second position represents 2,45% of the overall TOP500 performance.

The smallest machine by an integrator - Optimus - represents 0,08% of the overall performance.

In production of TOP500 supercomputers, North-America (USA/Canada) is dominating: 91% of the machines (456) with 89% of the performance. Eastern Asia (Japan) follows with 23 systems (5%). Europe now produces 7 TOP500 systems (1,4%) - it has been worse.

Also in using supercomputers, the USA leads. With 255 systems. Second is now, for the first time, the United Kingdom with 36 systems, followed by Germany and Japan, each with 34 installations. Italy (18) topped France (16). China is a clear runner up with 14 systems.

Clusters are now the dominate supercomputing architecture, with 291 out of 500, with MPP accounting for 123 systems. Most computers are of scalar type (475), but still 25 vector computers populate the list.

The dominant processor family is Intel in the current list with 287 systems. A sharp increase from the 119, just one year ago. Power is second with 72 and HP PA-RISC third with 57. AMD powers 34 systems. But there is still room for specialized processors, as the ones from NEC, Fujitsu, Cray and Hitachi.