MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; and BERKELEY, Calif.—In its third run to knock the IBM supercomputer nicknamed “Roadrunner” off the top perch on the TOP500 list of supercomputers, the Cray XT5 supercomputer known as Jaguar finally claimed the top spot on the 34^th edition of the closely watched list.

Intel and AMD come to an arrangement and now AMD can cheerfully present new roadmaps without worrying about pesky patents. In return, problems arise between Microsoft and Intel. The Redmonders were actually planning to advice against the application of Nehalem Xeons under Windows Server 2008 R2.

You now can have all the TOP500 lists in the palm of your hand using the new TOP500 iPhone application available in the iTunes Application store.

The new application can be installed directly from the iPhone (search for TOP500) or using iTunes.

At the third attempt, it finally made it. The supercomputer at the National Center for Computational Science in Oak Ridge, named Jaguar, now tops the 34th TOP500 list of supercomputers with 1.759 petaflops. In the previous two lists, the Jaguar had already gotten quite close to list leader Roadrunner from IBM (the first system worldwide to break the petaflops barrier in summer 2008) – the difference was less than 4 percent Linpack performance.

The Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) recently unveiled China’s fastest supercomputer, also the World Fifth fastest computer, which is able to do more than one quadrillion calculations per second theoretically at its peak speed.

Gigantic 100-core chips are something we had actually expected from Intel and company, not from small start-ups, but, after all, the race for the many-cores has just begun. Meanwhile, the career of former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz has come to an early and scandal-ridden end.

The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) unveiled Thursday China's fastest supercomputer, which could rival the world's most powerful computing devices.

The supercomputer, named Tianhe, meaning Milky Way, is theoretically able to do more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop) at peak speed. 

Good news about financial statements and new products from AMD and Apple – but also bad ones about dirty insider trading, currently stir Silicon Valley around Intel, AMD and Co.

Among the tipsters working for the boss of the hedge fund Galleon, the Sri Lankan-born multi-billionaire Ray Rajaratnam, there seem to be some important managers and management consultants of the scene. For instance, Rajiv Goel, Intel’s director of strategic investments, Robert Moffat, senior vice president of the System and Technology division of IBM’s computer group and Anil Kumar, one of the directors at the renowned consulting firm McKinsey. All of the accused were arrested and suspended from their jobs. Goel is alleged to have leaked information about Intel’s up-coming investments in Clearwire to Rajaratnam and Kumar was involved in AMD’s split-up as a consultant. Like Moffat of IBM, he is under suspicion of having passed on related insider information. Shortly before the deal between AMD and Abu Dhabi was made public, Rajaratnam and Galleon – by pure coincidence – bought around five million AMD shares. Also one of AMD’s managers, who remained unnamed, is supposed to have been involved in the indiscretions. However, unfortunately, the AMD shares quickly fell because of the emerging crisis; it’s pretty unlikely the deal paid off.

While Intel was holding the IDF at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, competitor AMD was just a stone’s throw away introducing its new products and roadmaps at a hotel around the corner – like usual. However, AMD doesn’t only have to hold its ground against Intel. It also has to defend itself against Nvidia – on various levels.

The TOP500 team had the vision to bring on board a genuine writer with some real insights into the world of high performance computing and supercomputers. As luck would have it, an opportunity arose recently for TOP500 to work together with the Heinz Heise Zeitschriften Verlag in Hannover, the publisher of the c’t– a German-language twice-weekly magazine for computer technology.