The TOP500 list and basic analysis
- This TOP500 PrimeurLive! special issue
Ad Emmen,
Erich Strohmaier
The TOP500 of the world's most powerful computers, lists the 500 most powerful
machines that are currently installed. Because the list is maintained already
for a number of years, it can be used for in depth analysis. In this special
issue of PrimeurLive!, we bring your a number of articles, giving you
insight in the current state of high performance computing in Europe
and the world, not based on speculation but on facts and figures.
Leading analysts and specialist inform you on the trends, the machines,
the vendors, the distribution over continents and countries. You can find
the TOP500 list in several places. For instance on the
Primeur information server.
If you want t study the list and ask questions as for instance:
How many machines of a certain vendor are installed in France?",
turn to the server in Mannheim.
- 1996: The Industrial Usage of HPC Systems takes off
Hans W. Meuer,
Horst D. Simon,
Erich Strohmaier
1996 was again a year full of changes for the High Performance
Computing (HPC) community. The shake out of vendors culminated in
Silicon Graphics (SGI) buying Cray Research. A few month later died
the father of ``Supercomputing'' Seymour Cray after a car accident.
New systems like the T3E entered the market place quite impressive and
there is a new number one on the TOP500. It is again a Japanese
system, a special version of Hitachi's SR2201 massively parallel (MPP)
system with 2048 processors. However the most important
changes took place behind the title-pages of newspapers and was not easy
to follow. During this year the industrial usage of HPC systems in
general and of MPP systems specifically gained a lot of momentum. The
U.S. is leading this trend very strongly with already 38% of all
systems installed at commercial customers. Many of these system are
used for non traditional applications in finance or for data mining.
We will discuss in this article the different developments based on the
TOP500 lists of supercomputer sites available since June
1993 and which, for the first time, provide a reliable
base for a well-founded analysis of the high-performance computing
field.
- The TOP25 Supercomputer Sites
Horst Simon
In this short note the Top25 supercomputer sites worldwide are
introduced. This list of the Top25 sites has been compiled based
on the information given in the Top500 report. First we briefly
explain how this list was established and comment on recent
changes. For most of the top twentyfive supercomputer centers we
provide a short description of facilities, equipment, and mission.
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Applications and hardware
- Industrial Application Areas of High-Performance Computing
Jack J. Dongarra,
Hans W. Meuer,
Horst D. Simon,
Erich Strohmaier
In 1993, a list of the top 500 supercomputer sites worldwide was made
available for the first time. Since then, the TOP500 list has been
published twice a year. The list allows a detailed and well-founded
analysis of the state of high-performance computing (HPC). This
article summarizes the recent trends in application areas of HPC
systems, focusing on the increase in industrial installations and
applications.
- Short description of newly featuring architectures in the Top500
Aad van de Steen
Since the last TOP500 report
the list has changed on quite
some points. In this article we indicate the systems that have dropped
out and we describe the architectures that have come in newly.
Continents and countries
- High Performance Computing in Europe
Uwe Harms
Although several countries in Europe installed new machines
(e.g. Spain from one system last year to 5 this year) the total number
of systems in Europe decreased to 132 that is 26% of the worldwide
installations. In 1995 we could report that 140 systems are in used
here. This time Rmax grew from 808 Gflops/s and Rpeak from 1180
Gflops/s to 1.7 Tflop/s (22% of the worldwide capacity) and 2.4
TFlop/s (22%) respectively. It is interesting to note that this year
the percentage grew by 30% compared to 1995, at that time Europe held
17% of the worldwide figures. The growth in Rmax and Rpeak comes to
more than 100%, much higher than the world trend of 32% in Rmax and
60% in Rpeak, comparable to the world trend.
- Developments in Japan
Eric Schnepf
The supercomputer situation in Japan is characterized by the
installation of many supercomputers of the new CMOS based
generation. The market distribution in Japan became somewhat more balanced
compared to 1995 when Fujitsu was leading far ahead. In terms of
performance Hitachi (774.5 GFlop/s) now became second behind Fujitsu
(910.5 GFlop/s) while in terms of number of sites NEC (15) is second
behind Fujitsu (21). In summary, Japan strengthened its position world-wide as the second
largest user of supercomputers. The three most powerful systems of the
world are installed in Japan!
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