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US Regains Supercomputing Crown, Besting China and Japan

Posted by samzenpus on from the catbird-seat dept.

dcblogs writes "The U.S., once again, is home to the world's most powerful supercomputer after being knocked off the list by China two years ago and Japan last year. The top computer, an IBM system at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is capable of 16.32 sustained petaflops, according to the Top 500 list, a global, twice a year ranking, released Monday. Despite the continuing strength of U.S. vendors globally, when China's supercomputer took the top position in June, 2010, it seemed to hit a national nerve. President Barack Obama mentioned China's top ranked supercomputer in two separate speeches, including his State of the Union address last year."

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe, maybe not... by Junta · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least in the *specific* performance characteristic of 64bit precision linear algebra, it's perfectly likely that the biggest player is reported.

    In the cases where secrecy is probably preventing you from knowing about it, it probably is optimized for 32-bit precision floating point and/or large storage throughput to fuel data mining.

    Of course, then there are collections of systems that could probably easily place in the list that are at least moderately well-known but not submitted, if it wouldn't be a financial catastrophe to take it down for a few days to dedicate to an xhpl run. An EC2 datacenter comes to mind.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    1. Re:Maybe, maybe not... by rgbatduke · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the cases where secrecy is probably preventing you from knowing about it, it probably is optimized for 32-bit precision floating point and/or large storage throughput to fuel data mining.

      Or (in the case of NSA) decryption. There isn't a computer large enough to solve really difficult decryption problems, but whatever there is probably lives somewhere in the NSA, and is very likely very, very large.

      Maybe not as large as Google's farm, though. Or even Amazon's.

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    2. Re:Maybe, maybe not... by AngryDeuce · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, there's reports that NSA is building a massive spy center in Utah utilizing quantum computers but I'm not sure if I believe it...it reeks of tin-foil hats to me.

      But, then again, it wouldn't really surprise me if it were true...I just didn't think quantum computers were anywhere near practical application yet, and wouldn't be for some time, in my extremely limited knowledge on the subject.