RSSIBM Still Dominates Supercomputer List
By Ed Oswald | Published November 14, 2005, 7:00 AM
IBM continues to dominate the supercomputing industry, according to the Top500 Organization's latest list of the most powerful computers in the world. Altogether, Big Blue's systems comprise 219 of the 500 systems included in the bi-annual survey.
IBM manufactured the top three systems on the list, with two falling under the company's Blue Gene supercomputer brand.
The Blue Gene/L is the fastest, at a speed of 280.6 teraflops. Built for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the system is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Following the Blue Gene/L is IBM's own Watson Blue Gene system, clocking in at a speed of 91.29 teraflops, and the ASC Purple supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that can operate at 63.39 teraflops.
"We've had a dominant lead in a variety of metrics," IBM's manager for the Blue Gene supercomputer Herb Schultz told BetaNews. But why is IBM such a supercomputer force? Schultz explained that it has to do with the business model IBM uses to sell its systems.
While its competitors offer primarily Linux clusters or one type of supercomputer system, Schultz says IBM instead gives the customer flexibility, offering a variety of types and platforms to fit their needs.
Altogether, the company's computers on the Top500 ranking account for 1.214 petaflops, the first time a single company has surpassed the petaflop mark in the list. Furthermore, IBM controls nearly 53 percent of the processing power, which is three times that of its closest rival.
IBM also points to its Power chip as a reason for its success. The company's most powerful supercomputers, the Blue Gene systems, are based on the Power technology.
"In the case of Blue Gene, one rack would equal 5.7 teraflops of performance," Schultz claimed. "It would take up to 20 racks of Intel-based supercomputers to offer the same kind of performance."
The Blue Gene systems have spurred much interest in the technology industry, and are being used, or are scheduled to be implemented, for a variety of different applications, according to IBM.
"Customers are using Blue Gene for high-end physics and moleclular modeling. Others are interested in using the system for things like fluid dynamics or weather modeling," Schultz added. "We've even had interest from Wall Street for financial modeling applications."
Terayon, I'm afraid its you who needs to get your FACTS right and actually open your mind to SZTOSZ comments and thoughts. Its people in the industry (if in fact you are) that halt development of those involved in the community. If thats SZTOSZ feelings on the matter then they are valid, so shut your shredded output hole and take a look at yourself first. FACTS, your in fantasy land mate.
Honestly, I find all the comments below completely off the track (exceptr for BobTheVeg who is the smartest bloke going round in here for sure). IBM, INTEL and AMD have hardware designed for different ends of the market, saying that they all tend to cross into eachothers market territory from time to time depending on the sales guys direction. I find your comments to be a joke as none of the processors you guys are talking about can be compared to eachother what so ever, mainframe cpu's dont handle graphics well and are designed to do high end number crunching, not going to help your games boys! Come work in a the supercomputer industry and then have a comment (especially if your going to be MR right and know it all Terayon) Clown!
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|Battlefield 2 on a Blue Gene/L anyone :). Bet you could even run DX9 Reference Renderer at ridiculous FPS. NNSA planning their world invasion seems a waste of cycles if you ask me.
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|I don't get the point of talking about Intel and AMD since they don't produce super computer.
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|IBM is way ahead of AMD, but they should be since they've been around for quite a bit longer and don't really have Intel trying to crush them.
That' doesn't mean AMD doesn't have some impressive technologies themselves though. Their HyperTransport is incredible for gaming.
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|That has to be one of the worst comments i have seen on this site 'sztosz'. Get your facts straight and dont you even start bashing AMD.
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|Face the truth: AMD makes much better processor than Intel but stil they consume a lot of power, abd they're over heated. I don't know how does it looks now, but in K7 the APIC integrated with processor was a syep back, it was just faulty. 64bits was not a revolution, and first projects were made few years ago (I think it was Intel's Merced). Hyper Threading should be a standart.
Look at the graphic cards, compare it to those from those made few years earlier. Then look at CPU's. Do you see the difference?
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|Wish I had one. I would not know what to do with it, but having the knowledge that I own one of those supercomputers would be great. :)
IBM just know how to use the knowledge and techinques thei own. Oposed to intel and AMD... hmmm... They could do two times faster processor and chipsets to control it, than they do know but they are to greedy to invest.
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|Why would you wish to have a blue gene they are designed for a specific purpose and cost several millions of dollars.
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