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25th TOP500 List Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Jun 22, 2005 12:11 PM
from the winner-has-a-lottaflops dept.
Supercomputing Hardware
Chris Vaughan writes "The 25th edition of the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers was released today (June 22, 2005) at the 20th International Supercomputing Conference (ISC2005) in Heidelberg Germany. The No. 1 position was again claimed by the previously mentioned BlueGene/L System. At present, IBM and Hewlett-Packard sell the bulk of systems at all performance levels of the TOP500. The U.S is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 294 of the 500 systems installed there (up from 267 six months ago)."
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  • Obvious Link? (Score:5, Informative)

    by yellowbkpk (890493) * on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:11PM (#12882187)
    The list can be found here:
    http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2005&M=06 [top500.org]

  • Links are Fun (Score:3, Informative)

    by TPIRman (142895) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:12PM (#12882193)
    And here's a link to the actual list [top500.org]. Also interesting is the historical chart of the TOP500 by manufacturer [top500.org], which tells a story in itself -- the decline of Cray and rise of IBM and Hitachi, for one.

  • So where is the list? (Score:5, Informative)

    by SeanTobin (138474) * <byrdhuntr@hot m a i l . com> on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:15PM (#12882215)
    You'd think that it would be a good idea to actually link [top500.org] to the html list [top500.org], or the xml list [top500.org], or the pretty charts [top500.org].

    The press release [top500.org] is interesting too.

  • Derived Moore's Law (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OlivierB (709839) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:17PM (#12882239)
    It would be great if we could verify Moore's law through some simple stats using the histrical data from this Top500 list.
    -For example:How many years did it take for Number ones on average to be dropped off the 500 list?

    - How many years after the list was published did it take personal computers tu make it in the 500list? To make it to the number 1 spot?

    - How many transistors did these computers have? Did it verify Moore's law?

    - Are we getting more TFLOPS per watt now? Per transistor?
    etc..

    • Maybe we should measure computer performance in more practical terms. Maybe it should be a function of input and output. For how much work the user puts in, how much work does the computer put out? That is the real point of computing, having a machine do work for us, so perhaps it would help to measure power in more concrete terms.
      • That is the real point of computing, having a machine do work for us,

        Dude, are you high? Everyone knows the real point of computing is playing games and viewing pornography.

  • Incomplete ranking (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why is my beowulf of Mac Mini's not in the list?

  • No PS3? (Score:3, Funny)

    by 0kComputer (872064) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:19PM (#12882254)
    How can this be? I thought it was running at 2+ Terraflops. Didn't anyone watch E3?


    • You see, the PS3 runs so fast that it actually broke the light barrier, travelled back in time, and made last year's list.

      -Eric

  • Position #501 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:21PM (#12882281)
    And at position #501, OSX running on an Intel processor. Hey, Steve promised it would be fast.
  • Are any of these supercomputers rated for testing BT bandwidth limits.... or making a website /. proof?

  • surprsing to me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by udderly (890305) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:23PM (#12882304)
    What's surprising to me is that Cray used to be synonymous with supercomputers and they now have comparatively few entries.

    • Re:surprsing to me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tenebrious1 (530949) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:50PM (#12882546) Homepage
      What's surprising to me is that Cray used to be synonymous with supercomputers and they now have comparatively few entries.

      Why is that suprising in any way? At one time, Ford was synonymous with cars, but today have news of Ford laying off managers. IBM used to be synonymous with the desktop PC, but with the sale of their laptop division are now completely out of the market. Sony Walkman was synonymous with portable music, but now everyone has an iPod.

      Cray is just another company that had a great product for a while, but couldn't keep innovating and couldn't keep up when the competition joined the market. Nothing at all suprising about it, it happens all the time.

    • What's surprising to me is that Cray used to be synonymous with supercomputers and they now have comparatively few entries.

      Cray still makes some of the fastest supercomputers around. They do not, however, make supercomputing clusters, which this list includes.

      So you're comparing rather different things. And it's an important difference since not all computing tasks can be parallelized.
  • Why do some machines acheive close to 90% of their theoretical max (Rpeak), while others get only about 50%? Is it communications bandwidth that makes all the difference?

    • Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)

      by CardiganKiller (854899) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:47PM (#12882519)
      It all depends on the system architecture and the type of problem being solved. Certain problems will adhere better to certain architectures and thus allow for a smaller gap between the theoretical and actual performance. The gaps can also be inherent in the architecture itself (e.g. communications bandwidth like you said).
      • Uh, for purposes of Top 500 List classification, they are all solving the same problem -- the High Performance Linpack benchmark (solving a system of simultaneous equations via Gaussian elimination with array pivoting). Granted, I beleive some variance in the size of the arrays is allowed, giving more massively parallel machines that can handle larger arrays an advantage.

  • BlueGene domination (Score:3)

    by javaxman (705658) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:34PM (#12882405) Journal
    BlueGene/L max linpack: 136800
    Earth Simulator ( #3 on the list ) : 51870

    The #1 linpack score is well over twice the #3 linpack score ?!?

    That fact combined with the large number of IBM-based systems on the to 100 list really makes it look like IBM is dominating this sector of the market.

    You know what data is always missing from this list that we'd all like to see ? The cost of the systems. Although, I suppose if you're looking at building the most powerful computer system on the planet, cost might not be your first consideration...

      • Re:BlueGene domination (Score:4, Informative)

        by devinoni (13244) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @02:56PM (#12883950)
        Remember the goal of BlueGene is to build very dense systems. Not only do you have to factor in the costs of the system, but you have the costs of the facilities. This includes costs of construction or renovation of the facilities to handle the power and cooling requirements of these behemoths. BlueGene/L in it's current incarnation is using 32 cabinets for it's processors. While Earth Simulator is comprised of 320 cabinets for the CPUs (an additional 65 for interconnects).

  • ThingsI would do (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitalgimpus (468277) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:36PM (#12882425) Homepage
    Here's a list of things I would do if I had access to one of the systems on that list:

    - See how long it takes Windows ME to boot
    - See how long it takes pico to open
    - run 'top'
    - play a wicked ass game of pong
    - bitch about having so many CPU's and only 2 USB ports
    - see if I could get a video card with dual display support
    - fire up a spreadsheet and make a wicked ass multiplication table going really far (like 10X10!) /had an original IBM PC // bored

  • Wrong criterion? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Locke2005 (849178) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:40PM (#12882453)
    MareNostrum wins hands down for best looking computer room [bsc.org.es]/

  • AMD on the list. (Score:4, Informative)

    by B5_geek (638928) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:40PM (#12882458)
    For you rabid fanbois (like me) here is how AMD scored:

    Rank Site Country/Year Computer /Processors Manufacturer Rmax Rpeak
    10 Sandia National Laboratories
    11 Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    31 Shanghai Supercomputer Center
    32 Los Alamos National Laboratory
    33 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
    39 US Army Research Laboratory (ARL)
    46 Grid Technology Research Center, AIST
    57 Swiss Scientific Computing Center (CSCS)
    75 DOE/Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory
    76 DOE/Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
    109 The University of Nottingham
    144 Automotive Manufacturer (F)
    155 Los Alamos National Laboratory
    156 Government
    167 Universitaet Wuppertal
    174 United Institute of Informatics Problems
    244 DaimlerChrysler
    300 Veritas DGC
    306 Ford Motor Company
    347 Idaho National Engineering Laboratory
    348 Japan Adv. Inst. of Science and Technology (JAIST)
    388 Umea University / HPC2N
    490 Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing
    499 Doshisha University
  • more than half of the top 500 runs on Intel processors, including 77 on Itanium, the rest essentially Xeon, and that's versus 25 AMDs and a quickly fading Alpha.
  • This is the first year the minimum computer speed exceeds a teraflop. Perhaps we sho now define a sumpercomputer as ten sustained teraflops because nineteen have this speed on LINPACK.
  • With all the more pressing issues for which supercomputers can be used, I don't believe that China is using the 18th fastest computer [top500.org] for weather forecasts. At least not the ones they publish in Xinhua [xinhuanet.com], anyway. Is there any verifiable way to tell what that machine really does?
  • These ranking are based on LINPACK doing traditional operations like solving linear equations, so supercomputers like the Cray MTA [cray.com] aren't even listed even though for some grand challenges they destroy everything else, for example when doing dynamic mesh weather simluations. Each processor on the memory grid has 128 processor threads where the active thread switches every cycle (so memory fetch has huge latency). This lets it have a unified memory model and still have extremely high throughput.

    So the MTA
  • Supercomputer #72 [top500.org], at the Chinese Academy of Science, comes from Lenovo. I wonder how far ahead IBM's sale of its "PC" business to Lenovo has put China's computing industry. And I wonder just what kinds of simulations [sorgonet.com] they actually run on the beast.
  • The U.S is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 294 of the 500 systems installed there

    And we'd bomb anyone who tried to pass us back into the stone age, since the only reason to have a computer this powerful is obviously for nuclear simulations.

    Of course, we prefer to simply stay in the lead, but when all else fails trip the other racer.

    Now, where is that incendiary protection suit - I get the impression I'll need it soon...

    -Adam
    • Hmm, we have:
      1)bomb research
      2)proof of concept
      3)aeronautics research
      4)climatology research
      5)general science research
      6)astronomy research
      7)bomb research
      8)biology research
      9)computer science research
      10)bomb research

      So, unlike five years ago most of the large supercomputers (published on the list) are used for scientific research rather than making and maintaining big bombs. Personally I'd say that's real progress, but I have to thank the government for keeping the industry going through what were otherwise so
    • Orisinal.com is a site that makes flash and shockwave games. Damn good ones too. I'd expect nothing less.
      • Games can easily be programmed in java. I remember when that was all you could find on the web. Nice, simple, easy to play games based on java.

        Now everyone thinks that Flash is the way to go because they can throw in more eye candy. Apparently the numerous comments on game playability that come up when talking about game design only apply to console or pc games but not Flash games.

        While yes, I do dislike Flash, I have seen one or two pages which use it in a great manner to enhance. Unfortuantel

    • Re:All this computing power (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bnavarro (172692) on Wednesday June 22 2005, @12:52PM (#12882572)
      Personally, I don't think that Human brains are binary based, logic gate controlled computation machines, and this difference accounts for why we have so much diffuclty with developing strong AI on them.

      I do believe, however, that we will eventually "crack the code" to the fundamental archetecture of our brains, and once we do that, we will re-design our computers accordingly, and finally achieve strong AI.

      I also believe, that our currently architected computers will play a key role in assisting us with cracking this code.

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