We have a new #1 on the TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputers. Big gets bigger by a factor of 2.8x as Fujitsu’s “Supercomputer Fugaku” tops the list at 415 PFlops. There are also an additional three new entries in the top 10. We break down the top of the list in this fascinating episode […]
ARM-based Fugaku Supercomputer on Summit of New Top500 – Surpasses Exaflops on AI Benchmark
June 22, 2020 by
The new no. 1 system on the updated ranking of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, released this morning, is Fugaku, a machine built at the Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. The new top system turned in a High Performance LINPACK (HPL) result of 415.5 petaflops (nearly half an exascale), outperforming Summit, the former no. 1 system housed at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab, by a factor of 2.8x. Fugaku, powered by Fujitsu’s 48-core A64FX SoC, is the first ARM-based system to take the TOP500 top spot.
2020 Predictions from Radio Free HPC
January 16, 2020 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC team lays out their tech predictions for 2020. “Henry predicts that we’ll see a RISC-V based supercomputer on the TOP500 list by the end of 2020 – gutsy call on that. This is a double down on a bet that Dan and Henry have, so he’s reinforcing his position. Dan also sees 2020 as the “Year of the FPGA.”
Video: SC19 BoF session on TOP500 supercomputers
December 19, 2019 by
“This years BoF will follow this traditional format and present detailed analyses of the TOP500 and discuss the changes in the HPC marketplace during the past years. Results from the Green500 and the HPCG benchmark will also be discussed. The BoF is meant as an open forum for discussion and feedback between the TOP500 authors and the user community.”
Lenovo and Intel Partner for VSC-4 Supercomputer in Vienna
December 12, 2019 by
Today Lenovo and Intel announced their collaboration to modernize HPC infrastructure at Austria’s most powerful supercomputer – the Vienna Scientific Cluster-4 (VSC-4). Built on Lenovo ThinkSystem servers and 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, VSC-4 supports more than 300 research projects led by scientists from higher education institutions throughout Austria, covering life-enhancing challenges such as meteorology to materials science, quantum chemistry to genetics.
HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand Sees Major Growth on Latest TOP500 List
December 11, 2019 by
Today the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) reported the latest TOP500 List results show that HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand accelerates 31 percent of new InfiniBand-based systems on the List, including the fastest TOP500 supercomputer built this year. The results also highlight InfiniBand’s continued position in the top three supercomputers in the world and acceleration of six of the top 10 systems. Since the TOP500 List release in June 2019, InfiniBand’s presence has increased by 12 percent, now accelerating 141 supercomputers on the List.
Radio Free HPC Breaks Down the TOP500
November 19, 2019 by
In this podcast, the Radio Free HPC teams looks at the newly released TOP500 list. “We talk about the changes in this version of the list (100 new systems, but none in the top 24), how the major countries stack up against each other, and vendor system share. We also discuss why this list is so, well, kind of not as exciting as we’ve got used to, and what we expect to see on future lists. There are some big things coming, but, like your birthday, they’re not here yet.”
World’s Fastest Supercomputers Look Familiar on November TOP500 List
November 18, 2019 by
Today marked the release of the 54th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. In summary, the top of the list remains largely unchanged. In fact, the top 10 systems are unchanged from the previous list. “The latest TOP500 list saw China and the US maintaining their dominance of the list, albeit in different categories. Meanwhile, the aggregate performance of the 500 systems, based on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, continues to rise and now sits at 1.66 exaflops. The entry level to the list has risen to 1.14 petaflops, up from 1.02 petaflops in the previous list in June 2019.”
IBM’s HPC Dreams are Tattered
August 26, 2019 by
In this special guest feature, Dan Olds from OrionX.net writes that IBM ambitions in the HPC market have fallen short. “Without more commitment and support, IBM’s POWER processor runs the risk of becoming this generations version of the DEC Alpha CPU. It was a fantastic processor and ran rings around competitors, but ultimately failed because of a lack of marketing and operating environment support from DEC.”
ServerCool CDUs are Cooling 10-Percent of Top100 Supercomputers
August 8, 2019 by
Today Nortek Air Solutions’ ServerCool division that its coolant distribution unit (CDU) technology is cooling dozens of the world’s most powerful and energy efficient supercomputers, according to the 2019 TOP500 and Green500 lists announced recently at the ISC 2019 in Frankfurt. “The TOP500 proves that hardware manufacturers are pushing their equipment’s performance envelope at the chip level, however ServerCool will keep pace with that growth by continuing to develop higher cooling and flow capacities with smaller footprints,” said Stuart Smith, global sales manager, ServerCool div. of Nortek Air Solutions.
