25th TOP500 List Released 274
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)."
Obvious Link? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2005&M=0
More obvious links (Score:2)
Dependencies:
I doubt many Slashdotter machines will do well against the top 500, but it might be fun to do our own "top 500" (for sheer geek value and bragging rights).
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:4, Insightful)
PowerPC is _based_ on POWER. The G5 is basically a modified and scaled down POWER 4 chip.
Apple's got other concerns rather than just raw computing power, and they don't need the features that allow you to have more than 4 or so processors in one system. POWER itself isn't designed for small applications - engineering workstations is about as low end as it gets.
It does suck though. PPC's a nice platform.
Top50 by CPU family (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Top50 by CPU family (Score:2)
Re:Top50 by CPU family (Score:2, Funny)
# 9: Xeon: 20, 28, 29, 34, 37, 40, 42, 44, 47
You have 42 on here twice. I know that 42 is the answer, but which has the 42nd position? Or are they tied?
Re:Top50 by CPU family (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know why top500.org didn't provide breakdown by operating system, so I found out myself. Here it is:
328 (65.6%): Linux
73 (14.6%): HP Unix (HP-UX)
52 (10.4%): AIX
16 (3.2%): UNICOS
7 (1.4%): Super-UX
6 (1.2%): Solaris
4 (0.8%): Tru64 UNIX
4 (0.8%): MacOS X
3 (0.6%): SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
2 (0.4%): Redhat Enterprise 3
2 (0.4%): HI-UX/MPP
1 (0.2%): SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8
1 (0.2%): Paragon OS
1 (0.2%): IRIX
I expected a few Windows, but surprisingly there is none at all. Not sure how accurate top500.org's "Operating System" field value is though.
Re:Top50 by CPU family (Score:3, Informative)
Cornell is using a Windows cluster. It is ranked 326.
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2, Funny)
"those that would give up essential liberty for temporal safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I happen to think temporal safety is very important, thankyousoverymuch. All that causality and stuff, ya know?
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
IBM do not have a PowerPC (or POWER) solution for laptops.
Why do people keep ignoring this very, very important facet?
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Link? (Score:3, Informative)
Earth Simulator Facts [top500.org]
BlueGene/L Facts [top500.org]
Links are Fun (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Links are Fun (Score:2)
So where is the list? (Score:5, Informative)
The press release [top500.org] is interesting too.
Re:So where is the list? (Score:2)
Re:So where is the list? (Score:2)
Derived Moore's Law (Score:5, Interesting)
-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..
Re:Derived Moore's Law (Score:2)
Re:Derived Moore's Law (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, are you high? Everyone knows the real point of computing is playing games and viewing pornography.
Re:Derived Moore's Law (Score:2)
That's opening a whole can of worms really. A computer is just a tool, and this kind of measurement is simply not possible. As another example, take a screwdriver - pretty much anyone would agree that it's a tool that makes life easier, but you simply can't measure the output of a screwdriver.
Computers are similar, and the reason for that is that while computers are machines that process data and thus have a "natural" input and output if you view them from a close perspective, if you step back to take a look at the bigger picture, it's exactly that natural definition that becomes irrelevant. This is implied in what you write, too: a computer that is used today may have a much higher raw computing power than one from 20 years ago (FWIW, it may well be a thousand times faster, if not more), but that kind of figure is meaningless unless you are doing pure number crunching.
All in all, I'd actually go so far as to say that if you really found a way to measure the amount of work a tool saves you in an objective and meaningful way *without* actually doing the same work twice (once with the tool, once without), then you'd likely get a Nobel prize for economics for it - pretty much all of economics seems to be centering around attempts to get good approximations for things like this, and the best (that is, most successful) managers are often those who simply have the best instinct in this regard (or the ones who simply had the most luck, if you subscribe to a more Dilbertesque point of view
Re:Derived Moore's Law (Score:2)
Re:Derived Moore's Law (Score:3, Funny)
Incomplete ranking (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Incomplete ranking (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Incomplete ranking (Score:2)
No PS3? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No PS3? (Score:3, Funny)
-Eric
Re:No PS3? (Score:2)
1. The PS3 isn't out yet.
2. The top500 lists does NOT go and look for systems that should/could/might be included - rather, you have to submit benchmark results yourself. I assume they do check them, of course, but as long as you don't approach them about it, you could have the fastest system in the world, and you'd still not get listed if you didn't submit benchmark results (incidentally, this means that the list is a priori worthless for assessing the actual computing power wielded by different governments, intelligence organizations etc., and that there's no reason to be paranoid about what the systems are really used for - what you should be paranoid about are the systems that aren't even listed).
3. The top500 list is based on LINPACK performance, and it's no a priori clear that the PS3 would achieve an outstanding performance there. Now, maybe it would, but I assume it's similar as with GPUs - it's optimized for high performance in a specific area, and that area isn't necessarily solving dense systems of linear equations (which is what LINPACK is all about).
That being said, it'll be interesting to see whether there'll be Cell-based machines (other than the PS3) in the list in the future - IBM likely has at least a few aces up their sleeves, and the Linux port to the Cell architecture is well underway (check lkml - an updated set of patches was just submitted for inclusion yesterday).
Re:No PS3? (Score:2)
Position #501 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Position #501 (Score:3, Funny)
Testing.... (Score:2)
surprsing to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:surprsing to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:surprsing to me (Score:2)
Re:surprsing to me (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Where's the Sony PS3? (Score:2)
I'm confused (Score:2)
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'm confused (Score:2)
BlueGene domination (Score:3)
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:2)
At ~10c per kilowatt hour * 95% uptime = 0.83$ / watt per CPU / year.
So ~100w CPU * 65,000 CPU's * 3 years * 2 (AC costs) = around 3.2 mill on energy costs.
Not that I expect them to dump the system in 3 years but the energy costs to run a system like that stop being worth it after a few years and then it's time to upgrade.
Re:BlueGene domination (Score:2)
Re:BlueGene domination (Score:2)
Re:BlueGene domination (Score:4, Informative)
ThingsI would do (Score:4, Funny)
- 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!)
Pong? (Score:2)
Come on. At least get into the 90's here:
* Set the borg going on Angband and see how many levels/sec it can do.
Re:ThingsI would do (Score:3, Funny)
correction:
- lose a wicked ass game of pong
Wrong criterion? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong criterion? (Score:2)
AMD on the list. (Score:4, Informative)
Rank Site Country/Year Computer
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
Sort by $/perf (Score:2)
For all Intel bashers out there... (Score:2)
Re:For all Intel bashers out there... (Score:2)
333 of them (2/3s), to be exact. And it's up from last year.
one teraflop too slow (Score:2)
Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Why not? Weather forecasts *do* require lots of number crunching power, and when you've got a big country with more than a billion citizens, then I'd say that there's sound economic reasons why you want good and accurate forecasts, too.
Or do you know something we don't? I wouldn't be *surprised* if it turned out that China (a dictatorship, after all) really did use the system for more sinister purposes, but I'm wondering if there is any kind of evidence for this or whether it's just paranoia (understandable paranoia, maybe even justified paranoia, but still paranoia).
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
So, in other words, I'd say it's likely that China (as well as several other countries, most likely including the USA) *does* have faster systems which simply aren't included in the list at all, which in turn makes it more likely again that the one that *is* included is indeed used for the purpose given - weather forecasts / research.
Thinking about it, if I was a member of the Chinese government, I'd in fact probably see to it that not even the most powerful system used for weather forecasts is listed, simply because others would draw the conclusions I drew above and attempt to derive the computing power of the non-listed systems from the power of those that are - so it'd make sense to attempt to conceal the true amount of computing power further and mislead other countries into thinking that the classified research systems are less powerful than they truly are.
Admittedly, that does sound like it's from a bad Bond movie or so, but I think it does make some sense at least.
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Or at least not when it comes to China.
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Re:Mostly Cloudy (Score:2)
Re:China already has new cooler weapons... (Score:2)
Misleading rankings (Score:2, Informative)
So the MTA can adjust the mesh to compute the tornado in very fine detail while using far fewer points for the huge swaths of calmer weather around it. Traditional supercomputers can't do that well since just distributing the data points to each processor is so much overhead.
Adaptive meshing is old hat (Score:2)
Given that your mesh isn't going to morph that fast in most physics codes (that may not be true for weather codes), you can afford to just run static and then pause every few (minutes, hours, days) and re-work your mesh to adapt to changing conditions.
Further, there's plenty of techniques to hide network latency from the machines. LWP/user threads springs rapidly to mind (one blocked waiting for IO, switch to another).
Plan Response (Score:2)
Fast Graphics? (Score:2)
Re:Fast Graphics? (Score:2)
How is that possible (Score:2)
Where would a PC rank in this list. (Score:2)
So, what's a current generation desktop proc return?
Isn't it obvious? (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 some hard times.
IBM and HP? (Score:2)
You forgot SGI (I've counted 10 SGIs in TOP 100, including #3).
Top 10 observation (Score:2, Interesting)
BlueGene/L - eServer Blue Gene Solution Livermore, United States Processors: 65536
It would astronomically increase the cost of the cluster. Windows 2003 Enterprise edition only handles up to 8 processors (and 32 gigs of ram), so any more than that, and you'll have to buy the OS over and over again (my assumption) - 8192 times that is... ( 65536 total processors / 8 processors per Windows install )
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluat ion/overview/enterprise.mspx [microsoft.com]
Microsoft 2003 Enterprise Server (up to 25 clients) $1,899.00 - Quick Froogle search...
8192 * $1,899.00 = $15,556,608.00
Imagine how much more you could add to your cluster for that kind of cash...
If I'm off-base or wrong in my assumptions, please correct me as this even suprised me after doing the quick research!
Ah, the nostalgia of it all (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I looked at one of the links (Score:2)
Re:I looked at one of the links (Score:2)
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. Unfortuantely the other 5 billion pages out there which try to use Flash fail miserably.
Want another site that requires one to use Flash? The New York Olympic committes bid for the 2012 Olympics [nyc2012.com]. Why is Flash needed? Other than moving pictures what benefit is there to using Flash over dynamic web pages? None. It's just an excuse to use Flash for the eye candy rather than putting your best forward as to why New York should be chosen.
I'm going on the presumption that the KISS principle isn't in the vocabularies of many web designers nowadays.
Re:Choosy Supercomputers prefer *nix (Score:3, Funny)
Until now.
Re:Choosy Supercomputers prefer *nix (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Choosy Supercomputers prefer *nix (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Choosy Supercomputers prefer *nix (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, come to think of it they do. Where's the Beowulf cluster of XBoxes?
Re:Choosy Supercomputers prefer *nix (Score:2)
Re:All this computing power (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:All this computing power (Score:2)
Every day I see evidence that we have so much difficulty developing strong AI on the Human brain.
Sorry... I couldn't resist ;)
Re:All this computing power (Score:2)
I live in Texas, and..well, beg to differ
Re:All this computing power (Score:2, Interesting)
That's probably because brains use a completely different architecture than digital computers. Neurons connect in a highly parallel fashion, with trillions simultaneous of connections arranged in 3D directly between various parts of the brain. Even with the 1000000X speed advantage of computer logic, the number of permutations of neuron connections compared with the serial nature of computer buses allows the brain to outpower computers on many real-world problems.
Because they are full of narrow bottelneck data paths, computers rely heavily on locality of reference and precomputed indices to do anything efficiently. A brain, with a storage architecture approaching fully associative memory, can instantly compare any input against a lifetime of experiences with no need for predefined indices. It is somehow able to use high-level concepts as access keys as well, in contrast to the binary numbers that computers must use to address storage.
The result of all of this is that for many tasks like navigation in the real world, a cockroach brain compares favorably to the most powerful current digital computers.
Re:LINK? (Score:2)
read, before asking.
Re:AlphaServer holding strong at 12th (Score:2)
Re:Damn Lawrence Livermore (Score:2)
And nine of theirs are in the top 100.
7,13,34,35,42,44,49,78,79
Not a bad collection of toys.
Maybe I should send them my resume.
I'll get right on that after I buy a lottery ticket with my new numbers.
Re:Is there one running windows? (Score:2)
Re:This is really the bottom 500... (Score:2)
Re:Come on Canada! (Score:2)
Good point (Score:2)
Re:Good point (Score:2)