New Top500 List Released at Supercomputing '06

Guybrush_T writes "Today the 27th Edition of the Top 500 List of World's Fastest Supercomputers was released at ISC 2006. IBM BlueGene/L remains the world fastest computer with 280.6 TFlop/s. No new US system in the top10 this year, since they all come from Europe and Japan. The French Cluster at CEA (French NNSA equivalent) is number 5 with 42.9 TFlop/s. The Earth simulator (no 10) is no longer the largest system in Japan since the GSIC Center built a 38.2 TFlop/s Cluster, reaching the 7th place. The German cluster at Juelich is number 8 with 37.3 TFlop/s. The full list, and the previous 26 lists, are available on the Top500.org site."

Comments

From 11 to 451...

[engagebot]

Dang, when our SuperMike was built (Lousiana State University), we were 11th on the list. A quick look now and we're at 451.

I feel old... ;0)

how many aren't listed?

[rritterson]

How well does this represent the real top 500?

If you look at the list, several of the computers/clusters are known simply as "Classified". It makes me wonder if those at the top really represent the top 10 most powerful supercomputers out there. I'm willing to be the US government, for one, has a couple of military use supercomputers up there that they aren't even willing to acknowledge the existance of.

At the other end of the spectrum, how many smaller clusters aren't on the list simply because the administrator doesn't have time to shut the entire thing down to run a LINPACK benchmark? The cluster I/we use would easily make it into the top 450, and maybe higher, but our research is deemed more important than the glory that comes with being on the list.

Re:how many aren't listed?

[flaming-opus]

I would say it's unlikely that the classified computers are in the top 10, and here's why: the top500 list is constructed using linpack to measure floating point performance of highly parallel computation. Much of the work done by intelligence agencies is data-mining. It's integer tasks that are probably I/O bound rather than cpu-bound. If there were a top500 list of high performance storage systems, I bet the classified systems would own the top of the list, just not for raw fp-compute power.

Take, as an example, the Cray MTA. It's a product that's not even mentioned in their products page on their website. Yet, if you surf the net very carefully, you'll find out they're building the next version for their single customer of the product-line: the NSA. Even at the maximum configuration, the machine wouldn't make the top500 list, but it has features that make it uniquely suited to a few very peculiar application kernels. (single-virtual-cycle access to any memory within the distributed system)

Sure the department of defence uses supercomputers to predict the weather, improve weapons systems and simulate, but these are probably not done on systems we don't know exist. That sort of stuff is done at AHPCRC or ERDC, or at Beoing/lochead-martin/Ratheon/etc. All of these sites have huge HPC resources, just not the hugest of the huge.

Google

[celardore]

There doesn't seem to be any mention of the GoogleNet. While it may not be used for figuring out sums and what-not, it does have an estimated 126 terraflops of computing power. I'd say that's notable. I bet at least half those terraflops are devoted to advertising aswell.

Rmax vs Nmax

[G3ckoG33k]

Comparing the Rmax and Nmax values it seems that the list would look quite different if sorted on Nmax instead of Rmax. Can someone explain in plain English the difference, as I didn't understand their explanation. Thanks! :)

Googleplex?

[neonprimetime]

How does Googleplex compare with the #'s in this top 500 list? (# Processors, max, peak, etc.)

Re:131072 Processors!

[Dadoo]

I can remember when processors had that many transistors!

You know, I reall like that metric, especially when you consider each of those processors probably has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million transistors.

Don't feel old, though. I cut my programming teeth on a processor with only 3500 transistors (6502). The transistors were probably so large, you didn't even need a clean room to manufacture it. :-)

Super computers on our desks?

[davonshire]

Just a passing thought looking at this list when you peek at the bottom of the list.
you see a 2.8Ghz system with 1024 processors or some such.

Sorry I remember working on repairing a Univac computer when I was in the Navy and how amazing it sounded that Cray had produced this a super computer that could do 800
million operations a second.

(Circa 1980 or so)

You could have one of these computers for I think it was 13 Million dollars.
And how fabulous that the power supply was actually under the circular bench
so you could sit on your investment.

Consider the processing power we have now a days on our desks. A lowly
3 Ghz P4 Laptop with 2 GB of dynamic ram and 60 GB of Hard drive storage.

I've yet to see a pair up with our single or dual desktop computers today
and where they sit back in the super computer days of old. If anyone
has a link or info I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks,
  Nestalgia is the romance of historic madness.

Re:What, no microsoft?

[MrFlibbs]

Also, what about massively distributed XP "supercomputers" like SETI@home? We just had a slashdot article discussing how the SETI version dominates the other spare-cycle-using background programs. If you summed up all the cycles in use at a given point in time, how would this stack up to the supercomputers on the list?

I realize internet-linked PCs are a different beast, but given the wide range of architectures on the top 500 supercomputer list, is it such a stretch to consider this a "supercomputer"? Anyone know how the SETI@home project would place?

I wonder

[Itninja]

I wonder where my old Packard Bell 486/sx 33 would fall in this list. Which makes me wonder if there's a 'bottom 500' list somewhere. I would love to see a list of the slowest computer still in use.

What about...

[Cr0t]

Hmmm... where is the NSA's Super Computer?

Apple is still holding up well

[Darth Cider]

Notice that #21 and #28 use Apple XServes still running with G5 dual processors. The Virginia Tech system, #28, has fallen only 8 places, from #20 last year.

It's too bad this list doesn't mention cost. When Virginia Tech built its first cluster, the big news was how absurdly inexpensive it was in relation to other systems. It would be interesting to learn if that still holds true.

450K servers + 90 petabytes?

[peter303]

A recent Wired story about their twentieth-something server farm in Oregon (near cheap electricity) has them at about 450K blades. Assuming a mix of old and new commodity disks averaging 200GB per blade, gives close to a 100 petabytes. Plus MicroSoft was blathering about 800K server farms recently which hints at its estimate of a "beat-google" number might be.

Distributed Computing Wins Again!

[BrianWCarver]

Individuals contributing their spare processor cycles via BOINC are currently producing over 380 TeraFLOPS putting them clearly in first place (if such distributed systems were counted).

SETI@Home is now operated exclusively through BOINC and it alone is doing over 167 TeraFLOPS right now, putting the SETI@Home network in second place, only behind BlueGene/L (if such distributed systems were counted).

You can contribute your spare processor cycles too by downloading the BOINC client and attaching to a cool project such as Rosetta@Home which folds proteins as part of an effort to cure human diseases. Join the biggest "supercomputer" today!