US Reclaims Supercomputing Crown

As predicted last week on NDCF, the U.S. has regained pole position in the latest Top 500 list of supercomputers, with the Department of Energys Blue Gene/L (BG/L) and NASA ’s Columbia system claiming first and second place (see US Stakes Supercomputing Claim and DOE Gains Supercomputing Crown).

After topping the list for the last five editions, Japan’s Earth Simulator, built by NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY; Tokyo: 6701) in Yokohama, was pushed into third place by the raw power of BG/L and Columbia. The last U.S. supercomputer to top the charts was the Lawrence Livermore National Lab's ASCI White back in November 2001.

The list, unveiled today at the SC2004 conference in Pittsburgh, reveals that clusters are fast becoming the most popular supercomputing architecture. In the current list, clusters account for 296 systems, up from 291 six months ago and just 208 a year ago.

This will be music to the ears of the InfiniBand vendors. The major challenge that most organizations face when deploying clusters remains the issue of bandwidth. Not surprisingly, suppliers such as Voltaire Inc., Topspin Communications Inc., and InfiniCon Systems Inc. have been busy banging the InfiniBand drum at SC2004 (see Voltaire Expands InfiniBand Roster, Topspin, Sun Add Grid Solutions, and InfiniCon Delivers InfiniBand for Apple).

With bandwidth as the major choke point, the popularity of clusters also spells good news for the 10-Gbit/s Ethernet vendors, according to Max Flisi, research analyst at IDC. “Supercomputing clusters are an environment where we see a lot of 10-Gig happening,” he says.But Flisi believes that we are still unlikely to see widescale 10-Gig clusters replicated elsewhere. “I think that to some extent it will trickle down to the enterprise, but 10-Gig will be mainly at the aggregation layer,” he says. “It’s not going to be widespread.”

Nonetheless, the list will have put a smile on the face of Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) CEO Craig Barrett and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) supremo Sam Palmisano. Intel remains the supercomputing processor of choice, accounting for 320 of the systems on the list. This is up from 287 six months ago and 189 last year.

IBM is still the clear hardware leader in the Top 500 list with 43.2 percent of the systems, followed by Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) with 34.6 percent.

Compiled twice a year by researchers at the University of Mannheim, University of Tennessee, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center , the list shows which governments (and vendors) are at the forefront of technology research.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum0