General highlights from the Top 500 since the last edition
- The entry level to the list moved up to the 5.9 TFlop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark, compared to 4.0 TFlop/s six months ago.
- The last system on the list would have been listed at position 255 in the previous TOP500 just six months ago. This turnover rate is above average.
- Total combined performance has grown to 6.97 PFlop/s, compared to 4.92 PFlop/s six months ago and 3.54 PFlop/s one year ago.
- The entry point for the top 100 increased in six months from 9.29 TFlop/s to 12.97 TFlop/s.
- A total of 354 systems (70.8 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is up from six months ago (289 systems, 57.8 percent) and a represents the largest share for Intel chips in the TOP500 ever.
- The AMD Opteron family, which passed the IBM Power processors a year ago, remained the second most common processor family with 78 systems (15.6 percent), down from 105 systems (21 percent) six months ago. 61 systems (12.2 percent) use IBM Power processors, down from 85 systems (17 percent) six months ago.
- Multi core processors are the dominant chip architecture. The most impressive growth showed the number of systems using the Intel Clovertown quad core chips, which grew in six months from 19 to 102 systems.
- The majority of remaining systems uses dual core processors.
- 406 systems are labeled as clusters, making this the most common architecture in the TOP500 with a stable share of 81.2 percent.
- Gigabit Ethernet is still the most-used internal system interconnect technology (270 systems), due to its widespread use at industrial customers, followed by InfiniBand technology with 121 systems.
- For quite some time, IBM and Hewlett-Packard sell the bulk of systems at all performance levels of the TOP500.
- IBM regained a solid lead this time with 232 systems (46.4 percent) over HP with 166 systems (33.2 percent). IBM, which had been ahead of HP since June 2004, lost the lead in the number of systems six months ago with 38.4 percent (down from 47.2 percent one year ago), compared to HP with 40.6 percent (up from 31.6 percent one year ago).
- IBM remains the clear leader in the TOP500 list in performance with 45 percent of installed total performance (up from 41.9), compared to HP with 23.9 percent (down from 24.5).
- In the system category, again no other manufacturer could break the 5 percent barrier, but Dell and SGI got very close with 4.8 percent and 4.4 percent.
- In the performance category, the manufacturers with more than 5 percent are: Cray (7.4 percent of performance), SGI (7.3 percent), and Dell (7 percent of performance), each of which benefits from large systems in the TOP100.
- IBM (141) and HP (140) sold together 281 out of 287 systems at commercial and industrial customers and have had this important market segment clearly cornered for some time now.
- The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 284 of the 500 systems. The European share (149 systems - up from 127) is still rising and is again larger then the Asian share (58 - down from 72 systems).
- Dominant countries in Asia are Japan with 20 systems (down from 23), Taiwan with 11 (up from 10), China with 10 systems (down from 13), and India with 9 systems (up from eight).
- In Europe, UK has established itself as the No. 1 with 48 systems (43 six months ago). Germany has to live with the No. 2 spot with 31 systems (24 six months ago).