June 2013

Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is the world’s new No. 1 system with a performance of 33.86 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark, according to the 41stedition of the twice-yearlyTOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The list was announced June 17 during the opening session of the 2013 International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany.

Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, will be deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China, by the end of the year. The surprise appearance of Tianhe-2, two years ahead of the expected deployment, marks China’s first return to the No. 1 position since November 2010, when Tianhe-1A was the top system. Tianhe-2 has 16,000 nodes, each with two Intel Xeon IvyBridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors for a combined total of 3,120,000 computing cores. 

Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory and previously the No. 1 system, is now ranked No. 2. Titan achieved 17.59 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 261,632 of its NVIDIA K20x accelerator cores. Titan is one of the most energy efficient systems on the list, consuming a total of 8.21 MW and delivering 2,143 Mflops/W.

Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q system installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, also dropped one position and is now the No. 3 system. Sequoia was first delivered in 2011 and has achieved 17.17 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 1,572,864 cores. Sequoia is also one of the most energy efficient systems on the list, consuming a total of 7.84 MW and delivering 2,176.6 Mflops/W.

Fujitsu’s “K computer” installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, is now the No. 4 system with a performance of 10.51 Pflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 705,024 SPARC64 processing cores.

A second BlueGene/Q system, Mira, installed at Argonne National Laboratory is at No. 5 with 8.59 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 786,432 cores.

Rounding out the Top 10 are the upgraded Stampede at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas, Austin; JUQUEEN at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany (and the most powerful system in Europe); an IBM BlueGene/Q system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; SuperMUC, an IBM iDataplex system installed at Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany; and Tianhe-1A at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China.

TOP 10 Sites for June 2013

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

Rank System Cores Rmax (TFlop/s) Rpeak (TFlop/s) Power (kW)
1 Tianhe-2A - TH-IVB-FEP Cluster, Intel Xeon E5-2692 12C 2.200GHz, TH Express-2, Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P, NUDT
National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou
China
3,120,000 33,862.70 54,902.40 17,808
2 Titan - Cray XK7, Opteron 6274 16C 2.200GHz, Cray Gemini interconnect, NVIDIA K20x, Cray/HPE
DOE/SC/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
United States
560,640 17,590.00 27,112.55 8,209
3 Sequoia - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz, Custom, IBM
DOE/NNSA/LLNL
United States
1,572,864 17,173.22 20,132.66 7,890
4 K computer, SPARC64 VIIIfx 2.0GHz, Tofu interconnect, Fujitsu
RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS)
Japan
705,024 10,510.00 11,280.38 12,660
5 Mira - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, Custom, IBM
DOE/SC/Argonne National Laboratory
United States
786,432 8,586.61 10,066.33 3,945
6 Stampede - PowerEdge C8220, Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.700GHz, Infiniband FDR, Intel Xeon Phi SE10P, DELL EMC
Texas Advanced Computing Center/Univ. of Texas
United States
462,462 5,168.11 8,520.11 4,510
7 JUQUEEN - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.600GHz, Custom Interconnect, IBM
Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Germany
458,752 5,008.86 5,872.03 2,301
8 JUQUEEN - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.600GHz, Custom Interconnect, IBM
Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Germany
458,752 5,008.86 5,872.03 2,301
9 Vulcan - BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.600GHz, Custom Interconnect, IBM
DOE/NNSA/LLNL
United States
393,216 4,293.31 5,033.16 1,972
10 SuperMUC - iDataPlex DX360M4, Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.70GHz, Infiniband FDR, IBM/Lenovo
Leibniz Rechenzentrum
Germany
147,456 2,897.00 3,185.05 3,423