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IBM Dominates TOP500 Super Computer List

IBM systems account for 240 of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world and more than half the total processing power according to the just-released TOP500 Supercomputer Sites list. IBM's Blue Gene/L developed and installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tops the list with an unprecedented sustained performance of c, or trillions of floating point calculations per second.

Joining the Blue Gene/L system at Lawrence Livermore in the TOP500 list top three slots are IBM's own Blue Gene/L Watson system at 91.29 Teraflops, and the recently-upgraded ASC Purple supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, now with 75.76 Teraflops. Blue Gene/L and Purple are systems in the National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program, which is dedicated to ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without underground testing.

IBM had more than 1.5 petaflops of the list aggregate performance total of 2.791 petaflops, more than three times the total throughput of nearest rival, HP. IBM systems accounted for four of the top 10 machines on the list. IBM also had 46 of the top 100 systems.

In addition, IBM is debuting five new Blue Gene systems on the TOP500 List, including the three systems at KEK High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation in Japan as well as the system at Forschungszentrum Juelich Laboratory in Germany - one which now stands at 8th on the list.

Since IBM announced the commercial availability of the IBM System Blue Gene Solution, a commercial version of the research project, in November 2004, a record number of 24 Blue Gene systems appear on the list. Based on IBM's Power architecture, the IBM System Blue Gene Solution is optimised for bandwidth, scalability and the ability to handle large amounts of data while consuming a fraction of the power and floor space required by today's fastest systems.


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