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November 2003

The 22nd TOP500 List was introduced during the Supercomputer Conference (SC2003) in Phoenix, AZ.

The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC and installed last year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan.

The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown impressively to seven systems. These systems are built with workstations or PCs as building blocks and often connected by special high-speed internal networks. The number of clusters in the full TOP500 grew also again strongly, now totaling 208 systems up from 149 six months ago. This makes clustered systems the most common computer architecture seen in the TOP500. The importance of this market can also be seen by the fact that most manufacturers are now active in this market segment.

TOP500 BOF Sessions at SC|03


Highlights from the Top 10:

  • The Earth Simulator, built by NEC, remains the unchallenged #1.
  • ASCI Q at Los Alamos is still #2 at 13.88 TFlop/s.
  • The third system ever to exceed the 10 TFflop/s mark is Virgina Tech's X measured at 10.28 TFlop/s. This cluster is built with the Apple G5 as building blocks and is often referred to as the 'SuperMac' in media reports. It uses a Mellanox network based on the new Infinband technology as interconnect.
  • The fourth system is also a cluster. The Tungsten cluster at NCSA is a Dell PowerEdge-based system using a Myrinet interconnect. It just missed the 10 TFlop/s mark with a measured 9.82 TFlop/s.
  • The list of clusters in the TOP10 continues with the upgraded Itanium2-based Hewlett-Packard system, located at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which uses a Quadrics interconnect.
  • #6 is the first system in the TOP500 based on AMD's Opteron chip. It was installed by Linux Networx at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and also uses a Myrinet interconnect.
  • The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown impressively to seven systems. The Earth Simulator and the two IBM SP systems at Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley national labs are the other three systems.
  • With the exception of the leading Earth Simulator, all other TOP10 systems are installed in the U.S.
  • The performance of the #10 system jumped to 6.6 TFlop/s.

TOP 10 Sites for November 2003

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