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November 2002

The 20th TOP500 list will be introduced at the SC2002 Conference in Baltimore, November 16-22, 2002.

The Earth Simulator supercomputer installed earlier this year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan, is with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (trillions of calculations per second) retains the number one position. The #2 and #3 positions are held by two new, identical ASCI Q systems at Los Alamos National Laboratory (7.73 Tflop/s each). These systems are built by Hewlett-Packard and based on the AlphaServer SC computer system.

For the first time ever, 2 PC-based clusters were able to gain a top 10 spot. At position 5 is a cluster at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built by Linux NetworX and Quadrics. At position 8 is a cluster at the Forecast Systems Laboratory at NOAA built by HPTi with a Myrinet interconnect.

BOF: 10 Years TOP500 Lists

1. Introduction
   Hans Meuer, University of Mannheim
2. Awards
   Horst Simon, NERSC/LBNL
3. TOP500 and Architectures
   Erich Strohmaier, NERSC/LBNL
4. TOP500 and Linpack
   Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee
5. New and Alternative Benchmarks
   
   • IPACS
     Franz- Josef Pfreundt, ITWM Kaiserslautern and Karl Solchenbach, Pallas
   • STREAM
     John D. McCalpin, IBM & University of Virginia
   • NERSC Performance Characterization Project
     Erich Strohmaier, NERSC/LBNL
6. Countries and HPC Centers in the TOP500
   Horst Simon, NERSC/LBNL

Highlights from the Top 10:

• The Earth Simulator build by NEC remains the unchallenged #1.
• 2 segments of the ASCI Q at Los Alamos are new at #2 and #3 with 7.7 TF/s Linpack each.
• 2 new PC cluster made the TOP 10:
  • #5 is a Linux NetworX/Quadrics cluster at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
  • #8 is a HPTi/Myrinet cluster at the FSL/NOAA.
• Two other systems are new in the TOP10:
  • at #9 a IBM Power4 system installed in UK at the HPCx Consortium,
  • at #10 a IBM Power4 system installed at NCAR.
• 3.2 TF/s are needed to enter the top 10.
• Hewlett-Packard has 4 systems in the TOP 10 followed by IBM with 3 systems, and one from NEC, Linux NetworX, and HPTi each.
• ASCI Red which was in the top 10 since June 1997 (7 times as #1) dropped out of the top 10.
• 7 of the TOP 10 systems are installed in the US, and one in Japan, France and UK each.

For more information about the sites and systems in the list, click on the links or view the complete list.