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June 2005

The 25th TOP500 List was introduced during the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2005) in Heidelberg, Germany.

The No. 1 position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. BlueGene/L also occupied the No. 1 position on the last TOP500 list issued in November 2004. However, the system was doubled in size during the last six months and reached a new record Linpack benchmark performance of 136.8 TFlop/s ("teraflops" or trillions of calculations per second). This system, once completed, will again be doubled in size and is expected to remain the #1 Supercomputer in the world for the next few editions of the TOP500 list.

The pace of innovation and performance improvements seen at the very high end of scientific computing shows no sign of slowing down. This time, half of the TOP10 systems on the November 2004 TOP500 list were displaced by newly installed systems and the last 201 systems on the list from last November are now too small to be listed any longer.

Highlights from the Top 10:

• The list shows again a major shake-up of the TOP10
• Only half of the TOP10 systems from November 2004 are still large enough to hold on to a TOP10 position, five new systems entered it.
• The new and previous #1 is DOE's IBM BlueGene/L system now installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). It has doubled in size and has now achieved a Linpack performance of 136.8 TFlop/s.
• The new #2 is a second IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution system, installed at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center with 91.20 TFlop/s Linpack performance.
• The Columbia system at NASA/Ames built by SGI slipped to the #3 spot from the #2 spot, which it had gained just six month ago, with an equally impressive 51.87 TFlop/s.
• The Earth Simulator, built by NEC and which held the #1 spot for five lists, is now #4.
• The #5 spot was barely captured by the upgraded MareNostrum system at the Barcelona Supercomputer Center. It is an IBM BladeCenter JS20-based system with a Myrinet connection network and achieved 27.91 TFlop/s - just ahead of a third Blue Gene system wned by ASTRON and installed at the University of Groningen with 27.45 TFlop/s.
• The #10 spot was captured by an early measurement of Cray's Red Storm System at Sandia National Laboratories with 15.25 TFlops/. This is also the new entry level for the TOP10 up from just under 10 TFlop/s Linpack performance six months ago.

For more information about the sites and systems in the list, click on the links or view the complete list.