In the new edition of the supercomputer survey, which was published last Monday, two IBM Blue Gene computers appear among the ten fastest computers
Aaron Ricadela, InformationWeek
Pictured: Yariv Eridor, director of distributed computing systems at IBM Laboratories in Haifa
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Two IBM Blue Gene experimental computers are among the ten fastest computers in the world, and about half of the 500 fastest computers perform over a trillion calculations per second - according to a survey published last Monday. In the new edition of the semi-annual list of the 500 fastest supercomputers, which was prepared by a group of academics from Germany and the USA, two prototypes of IBM's Blue Gene / L type supercomputers appear - in places 4 and 8. The Japanese Earth Simulator is still The fastest computer in the world, but in second place is a new system based on Intel chips at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The results of the survey were published at the International Conference on Supercomputers held this week in Heidelberg, Germany.
Earth Simulator, a computer used to build weather models in Yokohama, Japan, includes special vector processors. He achieved a result of 35.86 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflop) - and opened a big gap over the computer in second place, Lawrence Livermore's Thunder, which achieved a result of 19.94 teraflops using Intel's Itanium processors. In third place, with a result of 13.88 teraflops, is a computer built by a small systems implementation company called California Digital based on HP's ASCI Q system for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In fourth place is IBM's Blue Gene / L system installed in Rochester, Minnesota, which achieved a result of 11.68 teraflops. A similar system installed at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, is in eighth place with a result of 8.65 teraflops. The Blue Gene / L system consists of microprocessors that operate at extremely high speed but their power consumption is low. IBM claims that next year a new Blue Gene / L system installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will reach a rate of 64 teraflops and will be the fastest system in the world.
287 of the 500 computers on the list are based on Intel processors, compared to only 119 last year. HP supplied 28 percent of the computers on the list and IBM 45 percent of them - 224 compared to 199 last year. 34 of the computers are installed in Japan and another 55 in other Asian countries. For the first time, a Chinese computer made it to the list of the ten fastest computers in the world: in tenth place, with a result of 8.06 teraflops, is a system installed by the Chinese company Downing at the Shanghai supercomputer center.
IBM Israel's press release:
A new survey states: IBM no. 1 in the ranking of supercomputers in the world * IBM computers have a total power of two and a half times compared to HP
IBM ranked first in the list of global suppliers of supercomputers with 224 of the 500 most powerful computers.
The cumulative processing power of the IBM supercomputers ranked in this list amounts to 407 trillion operations per second (teraflops) - and it constitutes more than 50% of the total power of the 500 systems.
The cumulative power of the IBM computers on the list is two and a half times greater compared to the next supplier in the ranking - the HP company that owns only 19% (140 computers).
The list of the 500 most powerful systems in the world was ranked and published by experts from the University of Tennessee, the American National Laboratory for Supercomputing, and the University of Mannheim in Germany.
For the first time this year, the prototype of a "Blue Gene/L" computer manufactured by IBM is ranked in the top ten of the new computers in the world. Blue Gene/L constitutes a revolutionary change in the design and structure of supercomputers: it occupies only 1/20 of the space required for systems of similar capacities, and enables a significant reduction in purchase and operating costs in businesses that require extremely high processing power.
Yariv Eridor, director of distributed computing systems at the IBM laboratories in Haifa involved in the development of technologies behind Blue Gene, noted that the new IBM machine provides a first glimpse into the future in the world of supercomputing. "Only rarely does the first implementation of a completely new architecture succeed in immediately yielding an improvement of such orders of magnitude in terms of space saving and power availability," Eridor added.
The IBM laboratory in Haifa is developing innovative technology for job scheduling and load management on Blue Gene computers while making optimal use of the machine's resources.
The Blue Gene/L DD1 prototype ranked fourth in the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is capable of reaching a peak performance of 16 trillion operations per second, with the help of 8,000 PowerPC processors crammed into four cases the size of an average home refrigerator. The system is planned to grow up to 16 times its current strength - after already jumping in the last six months from the 73rd place on the list to the fourth place. In the eighth place of the updated list is the Blue Gene/L DD2 computer which provides a maximum power of 11.47 teraflops. This computer is already based on the new generation of Blue Gene/L processors, which offer higher power than those of the processors integrated in the DD1 computer.
IBM's supercomputers are used to improve the quality of weather forecasting, to design cars and planes, and for a long list of research tasks in the world of medicine and pharmaceuticals.
Three IBM computers are also ranked among the ten most powerful computers in the world - more systems than any other manufacturer. IBM also owns 68 of the 100 most powerful installations – and has more clustered Linux installations on the entire list – 150 such systems.
As part of the Blue Gene project, IBM is developing a broad family of supercomputers adapted to broadband tasks, while presenting a high scalability and the ability to handle particularly large amounts of data - while requiring a fraction of the amounts of electricity and floor space required for current generation computers. The final version of Blue Gene, which is being built for the Lawrence Livermore National Supercomputing Laboratory in California, will be completed by 2005, and will provide a performance of 64 trillion calculations per second. Upon completion, this machine is expected to lead the list of the 500 most powerful systems in the world. Another machine from the same family is planned for ASTRON - an astronomical research organization based in the Netherlands. IBM experts are currently examining a long list of additional applications for the supercomputers from the Blue Gene family, including research in the field of hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, climate models, and financial models.
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