NNSA and DOE supercomputers dominate

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) continue to dominate the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers with five of the top 10 high-performance computing systems on the list released Tuesday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 09) in Hamburg, Germany.

The latest list had some surprise newcomers to the top tier of high-performance computing (HPC). An IBM BlueGene/P system, dubbed JUGENE, installed at the Forschungszentrum Julich in Germany was ranked No. 3 on the list with a peak speed of just more than one petaFLOP/s (quadrillion floating operations per second). Another surprise was the appearance at No. 14 of a BlueGene/P machine at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

The ranking of the top two systems on the list remained unchanged from last November. Roadrunner, a 1.4-petaFLOP/s IBM system at Los Alamos National Laboratory, retained its top ranking, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar machine remains within striking distance at No. 2 with its 1.3-petaFLOP/s Cray system. Argonne National Laboratory's 557-teraFLOP/s BlueGene/P "Solution" is ranked No. 7. 

The Laboratory's BlueGene/L, with a peak speed of 590 teraFLOP/s (trillion floating operations per second), slipped to No. 5 on the list. The recently installed BlueGene/P "Dawn" system, which clocks in at a peak speed of 501 teraFLOP/s, makes its first appearance on the list at No. 9. Both systems serve NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program. Other LLNL systems in the top 50 include the Appro systems Juno and Hera, and IBM's ASC Purple at No. 50.

The Top500 list, which is widely accepted as the industry standard, is released twice a year; at ISC in June and the annual Supercomputing Conference (SC) in November.