The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 (non-distributed) most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL, a portable implementation of the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark for distributed-memory computers.
The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The list is updated twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputer Conference in June, the second one is presented in November at the IEEE Super Computer Conference in the USA.
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Project history
In the early 1990s, a new definition of supercomputer was needed to produce meaningful statistics. After experimenting with metrics based on processor count in 1992, the idea was born at the University of Mannheim to use a detailed listing of installed systems as the basis. Early 1993 Jack Dongarra was convinced to join the project with his Linpack benchmark. A first test version was produced in May 1993, partially based on data available on the Internet, including the following sources:[1][2]
- Mannheim Supercomputer Statistics 1986-1992
- "List of the World's Most Powerful Computing Sites" maintained by Gunter Ahrendt
- David Kahaner, who had an immense amount of data.
The information from those sources was used for the first two lists. Since June 1993 the TOP500 is produced bi-annually based on site and vendor submissions only.
The systems ranked #1 since 1993
- Cray Jaguar (since November 2009)
- IBM Roadrunner (June 2008 – November 2009)
- IBM Blue Gene/L (November 2004 – June 2008)
- NEC Earth Simulator (June 2002 – November 2004)
- IBM ASCI White (November 2000 – June 2002)
- Intel ASCI Red (June 1997 – November 2000)
- Hitachi CP-PACS (November 1996 – June 1997)
- Hitachi SR2201 (June 1996 – November 1996)
- Fujitsu Numerical Wind Tunnel (November 1994 – June 1996)
- Intel Paragon XP/S140 (June 1994 – November 1994)
- Fujitsu Numerical Wind Tunnel (November 1993 – June 1994)
- TMC CM-5 (June 1993 – November 1993)
List as of November 2009
The following table gives the Top 10 positions of the 34th TOP500 List released during the SC09 conference, November 16, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.[3]
Legend
- Rank – Self explanatory, most powerful computer on top.
- Rmax – The highest score measured using the LINPACK benchmark suite. This is the number which is used to rank the computers. Measured in trillions of floating point operations per second, i.e. Teraflops.
- Rpeak – This is the theoretical peak performance of the system. Measured in Tflops.
- Name – Some supercomputers are unique, at least on its location, and are therefore christened by its owner.
- Computer – The computing platform as it is marketed.
- Processor cores – The number of active processor cores actively used running Linpack. After this figure is the processor architecture of the cores named. If the interconnect between computing nodes is of interest, it's also included here.
- Maker – The manufacturer of the platform and hardware.
- Site – The name of the facility operating the supercomputer.
- Country – The country in which the computer is situated.
- Year – The year the supercomputer went online. Since then the computer might have been upgraded.
References
External links
- Top500.org
- Netlib
- An Overview of High Performance Computing and Challenges for the Future - Jack Dongarra disusses the TOP500 benchmark, its history and its trends.
- Green500 - Top500 supercomputers ranked by energy efficiency.
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