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June 2004

The 23rd TOP500 List was introduced during the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2004) in Heidelberg, Germany.

The Earth Simulator supercomputer, built by NEC and installed in 2002 at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan, with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second), retains the No. 1 position. However, the other positions in the top 10 showed significant changes, including the first-ever Chinese entry in the top 10.

A new No. 2 system: Thunder, an Intel Itanium2-based cluster system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California.

At No. 4 and No. 8 are the prototypes for the upcoming IBM BlueGene/L system. The prototypes are a joint development of LLNL and IBM and are currently at IBM’s facility. The final system will be installed at LLNL and is expected to replace the Earth Simulator by June 2005, perhaps even by the end of 2004.

The No. 6 system is a new IBM p690 system with 1.9 GHz Power4+ processors. The first such system in the world, it is installed at the ECMWF in UK and brings Europe back into the top 10. It also reflects the fact that, for the first time in a long time, the UK has surpassed Germany as the European country with the most TOP500 systems - 36 to 34.

No. 7 is a second Japanese system built by Fujitsu and installed at RIKEN. It merits special attention as it is a heterogeneous cluster with nodes of different capabilities, which makes it more challenging to achieve good overall performance. It is the first such system that high in the TOP500.

No. 10 is the first Chinese system ever to enter the top 10. Assembled by a Chinese intergrator, Dawning, the computer is based on AMD's Opteron chip and Los Angeles-based Myricom's Myrinet interconnect network.

The performance of the No. 10-ranked system jumped to 8.06 teraflop/s, up from 6.6 Tflop/s in the last list. Achieving 8 Tflop/s is no longer enough to enter the top10. The Linux Networx-built, Opteron-based cluster at Los Alamos National Laboratory, with 8.05 Tflop/s, only reached No. 11.

The “SuperMac” at Virginia Tech, which made a very impressive debut six months ago, is off the latest list ‑ at least temporarily. VT is replacing hardware and the new hardware was not in place for the compiling of this TOP500 list.

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