TOP500.org released its list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world earlier this month. Here are 11 of the best from that list.
The supercomputer that ranks number one on the list is the Jaguar Cray XT5-HE. Using a standardized test, it operated at 1759 Teraflops (trillion calculations per second). Jaguar runs on AMD Opteron six-core processors operating at 2.6 GHz. It has a total of 224,162 cores. The Jaguar Cray XT5-HE is housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. I especially love the image of a jaguar painted on the rack doors.
Photo courtesy of the National Center for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
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Number three on the list is the Roadrunner, another supercomputer that is owned by the U.S. government. Roadrunner, located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a BladeCenter cluster running Opteron DC processors at 1.8 GHz. It is made up of 122,400 cores.
Photo courtesy of LeRoy Sanchez, Los Alamos National Laboratory and carries the following disclaimer:
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At number four, the Kraken XT5 is the world’s fastest academic supercomputer. Effectively the same computer as the Jaguar Cray XT5-HE in first place, the Kraken is much smaller — it only has 98,928 cores. The Kraken is funded by the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee, though it is housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I love this image of the Kraken sea creature.
Photo courtesy of Daderot.
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The fifth most powerful supercomputer is also the most powerful in Europe. Housed at the German company Forschungszentrum Julich (which specializes in health, energy, environment, and information technology research), JUGENE is an IBM computer with 294,912 cores.
Photo courtesy of Forschungszentrum Julich.
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NASA’s most powerful supercomputer comes in at number six in the world. Operating at 81,920 cores in an SGI system, the Pleiades cranked out 772.70 teraflops. The Pleiades is housed at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Photo courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center/Marco Libero.
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The Intrepid is an IBM system with 163,840 cores that cranked out 458.62 teraflops during the last round of tests. The Intrepid is housed at the Argonne National Laboratory.
Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory.
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Sandia National Laboratories has the next supercomputer on the list. Named Red Sky, this Sun Microsystems computer contains 42,440 cores and was measured at 433.50 teraflops. In the picture, Kathye Chavez inspects a component board in one of the many cabinets that make up Sandia’s Red Sky.
Photo courtesy of Randy Montoya, Sandia National Laboratories.
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Appropriately named for a supercomputer in Texas, the Ranger is a Sun Microsystems computer with 42,440 cores that turns out 433.20 teraflops. It is housed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas.
Photo courtesy of the Texas Advanced Computing Center and AMD.
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The second most powerful German supercomputer, JUROPA, is also owned and operated by Forschungszentrum Julich. JUROPA is a Sun Constellation system that contains 26,304 cores and does only 274.80 teraflops.
Photo courtesy of Forschungszentrum Julich.
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Another Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer, Red Storm is a Cray XT3/XT4 device with 38,208 cores and measuring at 204.20 teraflops.
Photo courtesy of Randy Montoya, Sandia National Laboratories.
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Shaheen is an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer that contains 65,636 cores and was tested at 191.40 teraflops. It is housed at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and is the Middle East’s most powerful computer. Shaheen is the Arabic name for the peregrine falcon, which is one of the fastest creatures on the planet.
Photo of generic IBM Blue Gene/P cabinet courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation. Unauthorized use not permitted.
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