IBM BlueGene leads the Top 500 supercomputers

IBM continues to outmaneuver the stunned rivals to take the top spot in the list of Top 500 supercomputers 2006.

The number of supercomputers manufactured by IBM accounted for 47.8% of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers list published at Supercomputing 2006. Hewlett-Packard (HP) accounted for 31.2% ' market share'.

The list of the Top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world was created by research experts from the US and Germany. The criteria for ranking supercomputers are performance and speed - in teraflops (1 teraflop is equivalent to the ability to perform 1 trillion calculations in 1 second).

Although supercomputers have not yet used energy effectively, researchers have decided to add this criterion to evaluate and rank supercomputers in the future, because in In recent years, the cost of energy and the management of supercomputers has surpassed the cost of investing in hardware.

' We will take into account the rate of teraflops per watt of energy consumed ,' said Erich Strohmaier, an expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also involved in compiling the list. Top 500 supercomputers - said. However, next year supercomputers will still be ranked based on their computing power.

The change in the list of the Top 500 most powerful super computers in the world will show very clearly if sorting supercomputers according to the type of microprocessor chip. AMD with the Opteron microprocessor chip has won no less market share from Intel. The number of supercomputers using AMD microprocessors has doubled to 22.6% this year. Meanwhile, Intel's market share dropped to 52.2% - last year's figure was 66.6%. IBM dropped to No. 3 with 14.6% - last year's figure was 18.6%.

Top 5 most powerful supercomputers in the world

1, IBM BlueGene / L located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA)
2, Cray Red Storm is located at Sandia National Laboratories National Laboratory (USA).
3, IBM BGW located at Thomas J. Watson Research Center (USA)
4, IBM ASC Purple is located at the Energy Department and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA).
5, IBM MareNostrum located at Computer Center Bareclona (Spain)

However, IBM continues to lead the list of Topp 500 world's most powerful supercomputers with the IBM BlueGene / L system located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US Department of Energy. This supercomputing system achieved a processing speed of 280.6 teraflops - or equivalent to the ability to perform 280.6 trillion calculations a second.

Supercomputing speed also increased faster than Moore's Law. Moore's law states that the speed of microprocessor chips will double every 18 months, but the supercomputer's processing speed has doubled after 14 months.

The United States remains the world's most powerful supercomputer - with 306 supercomputers. Europe ranked second with 95 units, followed by Asia with 79 units.

Hoang Dung