Today, let's revisit supercomputing, even if superclustering is a more appropriate word in 2002. The SC2002 supercomputer show is taking place in Baltimore these days. And many companies announced new products last week, including Cray, IBM or SGI. (More on this later.)
In the mean time, the twice-annual list of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world has been released last Friday. This list is compiled by researchers at the University of Mannheim, Germany, the University of Tennessee, and the U.S. National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Berkeley, Calif.
Unfortunately, this list has two major flaws:
- It is based on a single suite of benchmarks known as Linpack, and every vendor has complete freedom to optimize and squeeze the codes for his platforms
- It is also based on *known* systems. So classified systems do not appear there. And some secretive industries, like oil and gas for instance, don't submit their configurations to the researchers.
Despite these flaws, don't miss their analysis of current trends in supercomputing.
I will just add one comment. Collectively, these 500 powerful systems represent a total of 223,053 processors, or a staggering average number of 446 processors per system. This is why I prefer the word of superclustering these days.
And now, here is a selection of articles recently published on supercomputing:
- AMD's Opteron to power Cray supercomputer for Sandia
Source: Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com, October 21, 2002
- IBM Chooses Linux for 'Blue Gene' Supercomputer
Source: Lisa Gill, NewsFactor Network, October 24, 2002
- IBM juices up Energy Department
Source: John G. Spooner, CNET News.com, November 8, 2002
- 10-Tflops computer built off the shelf
Source: Chappell Brown, EE Times, November 12, 2002
- SGI gets dense with Origin 3900 Supercomputer
Source: ComputerWire, November 12, 2002
- IBM Itanium 2 servers appear in massive NCSA cluster
Source: Ashlee Vance, InfoWorld, November 14, 2002
- HP moves up in supercomputer list
Source: Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com, November 14, 2002
- Cray flogs X1 supercomputer
Source: ComputerWire, November 15, 2002
- NEC Machine Again Leads Speed Ranks
Source: John Markoff, The New York Times, November 15, 2002 (Free registration required)
- PC clusters ranked in supercomputer Top 10
Source: Gillian Law, IDG News Service, November 15, 2002
- IBM supercomputer looms large
Source: Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com, November 15, 2002
Sources: TOP500.org, CNET News.com, NewsFactor Network, EE Times, ComputerWire, InfoWorld, The New York Times, IDG News Service, October & November 2002
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