IT: Latest Top 500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers released

The SC11 conference which is running in Seattle (USA) November 12-18 2011 saw the release of the latest Top 500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers which features a supercomputer with a performance level of more than 10 Petaflop/s.

A supercomputer installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, Japan, has achieved an impressive 10.51 Petaflop/s performance (10.51 quadrillion calculations per second). Top500.org group reports that K Computer has become the leader of the November edition of Top 500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers. The United States and China are already discussing projects of supercomputers reaching the peak performance of 15 and even 20 Petaflop/s, however this is a mere theory, and as for practice 10 Petaflop/s – is an absolute record. Last week China also showed off its supercomputer known as Sunway which uses homegrown processors. 



“This is the first time since we began publishing the list back in 1993 that the top 10 systems showed no turnover,” said TOP500 editor. Still in second place is the Chinese Tianhe-1A system which uses Intel and Nvidia chips, and the third place belongs to Cray supercomputer powered by AMD.

Although the top rankings did not change, the newest list does highlight a number of other developments. In early October Cray company announced a new $97 million contract with the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory related to the development of a supercomputer that could potentially deliver up to 20 Petaflop/s of peak performance or 20 quadrillion calculations per second.

The new system has been called Titan and it is planned to be completed by 2012. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory claims that though it possesses one Cray supercomputer, the new system will be state-of-the-art and will display greater performance.

Cray also announced about another contract valued at $188 million for building one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.