The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated 68
1sockchuck writes "The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here's a visual guide to the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released this week at the SC11 conference."
How far we've come! (Score:4, Interesting)
The first top 500 list was published in June 1993 [top500.org]. The fastest computer on that list was a CM-5/1024 made by Thinking Machines Corporation. It was rated at: 59.70 Rmax(GFs) and 131.00 Rpeak(GFs).
Last place on that first top 500 list [top500.org] (scroll down) was held by a VP-200 made by Fujitsu/SNI which had 1 core and was rated at 0.422 Rmax(GFs) and 0.533 Rpeak(GFs).
I've heard the expression about carrying a supercomputer in your pocket - how close are we? I'd expect most of the latest Android/iPhone/smartphones can beat that last-place finisher from 1993. I'm doubtful that any of these devices could beat that first place finisher, but I suspect desktops (especially with GPUs) should be there by now. If you're are interested, you can get the software from here [top500.org].
Any takers? How does YOUR system compare?
publically acknolwedged systems (Score:4, Interesting)
the NSA has always been at the forefront of supercomputing, and it has always been incredibly secretive about it.
who knows about other nations intelligence agencies
Believe it when I see it (Score:2, Interesting)
the NSA has always been at the forefront of supercomputing, and it has always been incredibly secretive about it.
who knows about other nations intelligence agencies
Until the day arrives when the NSA declassifies some of the super-powerful technology it's supposed to always have, my bet is that they only have slightly evolved versions of what you see here.
The NSA has no processor foundries. They have no manufacturing plants. They don't have chip designers on staff (or, at least, not very many.) The amount of money they'd have to pay to get custom super-parts developed is dwarfed by the billions and billions spent to improve commodity architectures. There's just no way they can get anything that regular people can't also get.
So they're almost certainly dependent on just buying more. In other words, linearly scaling the machines you see here. Maybe theirs have 2x-10x as many cores. Maybe they have five hundred of their own.
If I had to guess, I'd say the NSA's cryptographic prowess comes mostly from algorithms, not hardware. They have the best human codebreakers, doubtless able to shave FLOPs off here and there.
More importantly, though, they have SIGINT. Why decrypt when there's a treasure trove of information available to any law enforcement agency that has taps on any phone, GPS on any vehicle, traffic monitors on any Internet connection they choose, with no pesky subpoena or judicial oversight?
citation needed (Score:5, Interesting)
according to James Bamford's books, especially the last two, they actually did have a chip foundry, they have been at the top of several supercomputer programs, and they are the only reason that CRAY survived in a capitalist economy where massive supercomputing R&D doesn't have a quick ROI.
we don't know what they have today. but we know what they had in the past, vs what everyone thought was going on in the past. and what everyone thought was wrong.