High Performance Computing in Europe

Although several countries in Europe installed new machines (e.g. Spain from one system last year to 5 this year) the total number of systems in Europe decreased to 132 that is 26% of the worldwide installations. In 1995 we could report that 140 systems are in used here. This time Rmax grew from 808 Gflops/s and Rpeak from 1180 Gflops/s to 1.7 Tflop/s (22% of the worldwide capacity) and 2.4 TFlop/s (22%) respectively. It is interesting to note that this year the percentage grew by 30% compared to 1995, at that time Europe held 17% of the worldwide figures. The growth in Rmax and Rpeak comes to more than 100%, much higher than the world trend of 32% in Rmax and 60% in Rpeak, comparable to the world trend.

Cray has just installed 22 T3Es worldwide and 15 of them in Europe. They announced it beginning of October to the TOP500\ board, so the situation has changed within one week drastically - only one European T3E system was listed in the TOP500 of end of September. So we had to integrate them and to give an impression of the influence of 21 computers.The total number of Cray systems increased from 120 (24%) October 1996 to 132 (26.4) in the November list, and 5 T3Es to 23 in this actual list.

Although several countries in Europe installed new machines (e.g. Spain from one system last year to 5 this year) the total number of systems in Europe decreased to 132 that is 26% of the worldwide installations. In 1995 we could report that 140 systems are in used here. This time Rmax grew from 808 Gflops/s and Rpeak from 1180 Gflops/s to 1.7 Tflop/s (22% of the worldwide capacity) and 2.4 TFlop/s (22%) respectively. It is interesting to note that this year the percentage grew by 30% compared to 1995, at that time Europe held 17% of the worldwide figures. The growth in Rmax and Rpeak comes to more than 100%, much higher than the world trend of 32% in Rmax and 60% in Rpeak, comparable to the world trend.

The major delay of the delivery of Cray's T3E with all the ordered processors causes an smaller percentage in the TOP500 than expected. In Germany for example the following institutions ordered T3Es, Max-Planck-Ges. in Garching (400 processors, 128 delivered), the Research Center Juelich (512 processors, actually delivered 136) and Univ. Stuttgart (512, now having 128). This means that Juelich and Stuttgart would have been number 4 and 5 in the list with about 190 Gflop/s, Garching about 150 Gflop/s. Thus we miss about 350 Gflop/s compared to the procurements only with these three installations. In other European countries there are also orders for more and bigger T3Es.

This time the most powerful machine in Europe - still in the UK as last year - changed from an American vendor to a Japanese one, from Cray T3D to Fujitsu's VPP 700 with 46 processors, a vector-parallel machine, at ECMWF in Reading that is number 10 worldwide. This weather forecast center moved from Cray (C90s and T3D) machines to the Japanese vendor and installed the first processors in March this year. Some details will be mentioned in the UK section. Number two in Europe is a Cray T3E 256 processors in France at CNRS/IDRIS, followed by the 32 processor NEX SX-4 machine in Germany at Stutgart. This year Europe jumped back with 8 computers into the first 50 TOP500\ machines, compared to 6 last year, from whom one was a vendor machine.

In Europe HPC computers are mainly used in academic and research environment, about 73% compared to 23% for industrial usage, vendors and classified institutions can nearly neglected with 2% compared to America. The academia and research fall back to 96 computers compared to 105 in 1995. This means that not so powerful computers have left this list and had not been replaced by faster computers. If one changes to Rmax, academic and research keep the percentage with 82% (1.4 Tflop/s), an increase compared to the last year, also in Rmax of 220%, 630 Gflop/s in 1995. An other interesting fact can be seen, research was pushed by the local governments. Last year their Rmax was comparable (310 Gflop/s), now academia comes to 500 Gflop/s compared to 940 on the research side. Industry came to 13%, Rmax grew from 122 Gflop/s to 220, nearly doubled. A similar situation can be observed with Rpeak.

Industry uses smaller and less powerful TOP500 computers (mean value 7/9 Gflop/s, Rmax/Rpeak) than research (17/25 Gflop/s), academia (11/16 Gflop/s) and classified institutions (18/24 Gflop/s). Compared to Europe, Japan has access to much powerful machines (Rmax) in the different areas, academia 40 Gflop/s, research 27 Gflop/s and industry 12 Gflop/s. If one looks at USA/Canada the academia gets 13 Gflop/s, research 20 Gflop/s, industry 8 Gflop/s and the classified come to 13 Gflop/s Rmax performance. Surely this changes, when the all the ordered machines are in operation in Europe. We will see the results in June.

Europe does not want their own machines, or the acceptance is too low, only 5% of all the computers. They buy American HPC computers machines, 83 % of the computers, but the Japanese are improving their market share from 8 to 11%. Nearly the share can be found with Rmax. American computers sum up to 79% while the Japanese come to 18%, the rest are European computers. This underlines again the dominance of Us-incorporated, but that the Japanese computers are now accepted by users and the heads of the computer centers.

Distribution on country groups

Although the most of the countries in Europe decreased in numbers some could stay at the same number, for example Germany still 51. France dropped from 24 to 17 and Poland from 3 to 1, the big countries are still leading. The percentages of the computers and the Rmax of some countries in relation to the European figures: Germany 39%/38%, UK 14%/21%, France 13%/14% and surprisingly Switzerland 7%/9% and the Netherlands with 7%/6%. This figures show that 80% of the machines and 88% of the Rmax are collected in these countries. To show the Rmax figures of the available performance: Germany 666 Gflop/s, UK 361 Gflop/s, France 239 Gflop/s, Switzerland 151 GFlop/s, Netherlands 112 Gflop/s, the other countries as Italy, Denmark, Spain, follow in the range of 30 - 40 Gflop/s. The rest is nearly neglectable.

Comparing the actual results with the last years list, the improvement in Rmax can be seen clearly, in 1995 we got in: Germany 277 Gflops/s (240%), UK 144 Gflops/s (250%), France 124 Gflops/s (190%), Switzerland came up to 96 Gflops/s (157%), as Benelux 53 GFlops/s (211%).

Eastern Europe fall back this year and is still underdeveloped in the supercomputer field, only a Convex in Poland and Slovenia are listed.

As you compare the factor Rmax/machine concerning the different countries, one can recognize the "best" equipped countries: Switzerland this year comes to 13 Gflops/s/computer (10 in 1995), UK 20 (8.5 in 1995), Germany 12 (5.4), France 14 (5.2). The factor for Europe as a total divides to 13 Gflp/s/machine (6 last year). If one sets these results in relationship with the other continents, Japan 30 (17 in 1995) and the USA with 13 (10 in 1995). Compared to America, the European countries now had made up this time.

The different manufacturers

Number one in Europe in machines on the vendors side is Cray, 42 systems and 783 Gflop/s, if one adds the SGI figures, 20 machines and 126 Gflop/s, nearly 50% of the machines and 52% of Rmax show the dominance of this new group in Europe. As the SGIs are not extremely high ended, the decrease form 34 systems in 1995 to 20 machines. They are followed by IBM, 35 computers (7%) of Europe and 322 Gflop/s (19%). Last year IBM came up to 41 machines, Cray Research to 28 pieces. HP-Convex is still active with its SPP machine, 8 computers (7%) with 53 Gflop/s, two new Exemplar S-class have been sold in Germany. Very interesting is the improvement of in figures of NEC, from 4 last year to 7 now and a performance of 182 Gflop/s (10%). Fujitsu/Siemens Nixdorf got the same number but improved the Rmax performance to 170 Gflop/s (10%).

There is one bad aspect, European vendors don't play a role in the TOP500 business. Meiko is represented by only two machines in Europe, two others at Lawrence Livermore in the US. Parsytec decreased from 10 to only 6 systems, 5 in Europe and one in Japan. In this list we are missing the Italian company Alenia Spazio again that took over/cooperates with Meiko - they are mainly selling their computers in the theoretical physics arena. The UK based vendor of parallel systems Parsys probably has not sold big systems - they use the Digital Alpha processor.

Architectures

Last year I mentioned the trend that SMP's are in. Because of the lack in Rmax performance this changed like a wave this year.

MPPs are still the number one in Europe, 92 systems (70% of all architectures) with an Rmax of 1.32 Tflop/s (76%) - a mean value of 14 Gflop/s/computer. Japan has about double the performance with nearly half the machines, 47 MPPs with a peak of 1.8 Tflop/s, nearly 38 Gflop/s/computer. Although America is leading here too, they do not use such powerful MPPs, 170 systems with an Rmax of 2.8 Tflop/s. The percentage of MPPs compared to all the machines in the region comes to 60% in numbers and 77% in performance in Japan, and 63% and 78% in performance in America. Last year we found 81 machines compared to 89 in 1994, with an Rmax of 534 Gflops/s versus 274 Gflops/s in 1994. This shows that MPPs are very important in respect to the LINPACK benchmark

But the vector machines are still workhorses in the computer centers, 22 computers (17% of the European) vector processors with 320 Gflop/s (18%). The number had reduced from 27 machines but grown to 188% in the performance with 170 Gflops/s last year.

SGI and other SMP vendors had to stop their attack in the top HPC market. From 33 systems with an Rmax of 104 Gflops/s in 1995 they decreased to only 18 machines with 100 Gflop/s. The same trend can be seen in Japan, there they have nearly no importance, 3 machines with 18 Gflop/s. In the US the number reduced from 74 last year to 46 this year. With an minimal performance increase from 248 to 255 Gflop/s. But one should not forget that the SMPs are not dedicated for the top high-end market but are used heavily in the CAD and CAE departments for example in the automotive industry.

Thus in total the trend in the TOP500-HPC systems shows the still growing importance of MPPs.

Germany

Germany is much stronger than ever and again the leader in Europe. In short: 39% of the computers in Europe, and 10% worldwide, in all 51 pieces; 38% in Rmax in Europe and 8% worldwide with 666 Gflop/s; 38% of Rpeak in Europe and 8% compared to the world with 918 Gflop/s.

There are some major changes in the philosophy of HPCN in academia and research and a new approach will be realized. The proposal of the German Wissenschaftsrat to install two to four HPC centers for Germany is now in the realization phase. On the research side this is Research Center Juelich, a Cray T90 12 processors, a Cray T3E 512 processors (actually there are 136 installed), a Cray J90 and Cray M94. It supports the German theoretical physics and chemists with 50% of its computing power, 35% can be used by the Research Center itself. The last 15% are scheduled for industrial projects. In the field of chemistry, exploration end environmental sciences they now offer expertise of their institutes and the HPC power to the industry. This approach will improve and speed up the transfer of research results from the centers to industry.

The other just opened center is in Stuttgart, there the University, Porsche AG and debis Systemhaus cooperate in a joint company. At the University they have installed a NEC SX4 32 processors, a Cray T3E 512 processors is scheduled (128 delivered), at debis Systemhaus a Cray T90 4 processors, a C90 and a J90 are accessible. The University is offering 50% of its power to academic researchers all over Germany. About 7% is reserved for industry, debis Systemhaus distribute the computing time within the Daimler-Benz Group and will sell it to major companies but also to small and medium enterprises. An other, just published idea will be realized at debis Systemhaus for engineers of the Daimler-Benz Group. If a research project with very innovative elements needs HPC computing time, the researchers can apply for a funding that will be granted by a Research Council of Daimler.

With these two centers it is now possible to support industrial users at their first steps on HPC machines on a low level of costs. There is no need to install systems, but only to use them.

As the University Stuttgart mentioned during the opening ceremony, several European research institutes showed their interest to use the machines in this new center. That opens new perspectives for an inter-European HPC usage.

Some details on these activities can be found in the last TOP500\ issue and Primeur, the European virtual magazine (http://www.hoise.com/primeur).

United Kingdom

In 1996 UK improved its number of systems a bit to 18, but much better the performance rather drastically, from 144 Gflop/s to 360 in Rmax and from 200 to 470. These figures mean in installations 14% of Europe and 4% worldwide, 21% of Europe and 5% worldwide of Rmax and 20% Europe and 4% of the world of Rpeak.

A very interesting fact is that Fujitsu won the big procurement of ECMWF in Reading, the European weather forecast center. They declared that this machine fits their requirements. In March this year they installed a 16 processor VPP300 that should perform comparable or better to the old Cray C90-16. The next step mid of this year an improvement of a factor of 5, in March 1998 the tenfold improvement and in September 1998 the factor of 25. The United Kingdom Meteorological Office in Bracknell installed a Cray T3E with 128 processors. So the meteorologists work with different computers. That reminds me of the early days of HPC, when ECMWF had a Cray and their British colleagues a CDC Cyber 205.

An other interesting event started Hitachi, the first parallel machine outside Japan was installed at their research center in Great Britain. Then they sold an SR2201 to University of Cambridge.

France

This year there are only 17 machines in France (13% of Europe, 3% of the world) which deliver an Rmax of 240 Gflop/s (14% Europe, 3% world) and an Rpeak of 356 Gflop/s (15% Europe, 3% world). Their fist machine ranks on number 11, a very powerful Cray T3E with 256 processors. In France there is a variety of machines from different vendors.

Benelux

This year Belgium fall out of the list, but the small Luxembourg entered it with one machine, a PowerChallenge with 5 Gflop/s. In the Netherlands 9 systems can be accesses, 112 Gflop/s Rmax and 140 Gflop/s Rpeak. Big Blue is still dominant with 6 machines, mainly used by Shell, 5 systems, a Cray T3E and J90 and an NEC SX4.

Switzerland

Although a small country, it has the highest usage of HPC when combining economical factors like inhabitants or net growth into this study. In total 9 machines with an Rmax of 151 Gflop/s are installed, nearly of each system one machine, one Cray (25 Gflop/s), one Digital (5 Gflop/s), two IBMs (18 Gflop/s), one Intel (19 Gflop/s), one Meiko (5 Gflop/s), two NEC (42 Gflop/s) and one SGI (16 Gflop/s). The HPC machines are used in the academic and research environments, although the SCSC/CSCS center in Manno that is equipped with two NEC machines, SX-3 24, SX-4 16 and parallel systems from NEC, is actively working to attract industry. This compares to the approach in Germany.

Uwe Harms
Harms Supercomputing Consulting
Bunsenstr. 5 München
Germany