New Top 500 Supercomputer List

geaux and other readers let us know that the new Top 500 Supercomputer list is out. The top two both break the Petaflops barrier: LANL's IBM "RoadRunner" and ORNL's Cray XT5 "Jaguar." (Contrary to our discussion a few days back, IBM's last-minute upgrade of RoadRunner salvaged the top spot for Big Blue. Kind of like bidding on eBay.) The top six all run in excess of 400 Teraflops. HP has more systems in the top 500 than IBM, reversing the order of the previous list. Both Intel and AMD issued press releases crowing over their wins, and both are correct — AMD highlights its presence in 7 of the top 10, while Intel boasts that 379 of the top 500 use their chips.

you're joking, right?

has the Top 500 Supercomputer List been slashdotted already?

Re:you're joking, right?

SETI@home [berkeley.edu] gets 495 teraFLOPS, according to this site: http://boincstats.com/stats/project_graph.php?pr=sah [boincstats.com]

Sure, it's not one supercomputer, but it still does more calculations for one purpose than any other single supercomputer can.

Re:you're joking, right?

On the other hand, the Folding @ Home project, which is actually doing something useful with all those cycles, has broken the PetaFLOP [1up.com] mark, and did so over a year ago.

Re:

that's a pretty shortsighted statement. (and it also happens to be why the SETI project has had such a hard time receiving funding in the past.)

just because it hasn't produced any practical results yet doesn't mean it's not useful. unless you're assuming that we are alone in the universe, which is a pretty big assumption, the SETI project is an incredibly important scientific endeavor. and through SETI@Home, the resource costs of the project has been largely subsidized by volunteers who're contributing thei

Re:you're joking, right?

what does it matter if we can't communicate back when/if we find a signal? the impact such knowledge would have on human society, on human history, would be tremendous just by the philosophical implications alone.

should we stop all fundamental science research just because they don't have immediate practical or technological applications? there's something to be said for the search of knowledge for its own sake. and not knowing whether or not you will ever find an answer to a particular scientific question, or if you will succeed in a particular objective, is hardly a good reason for not even trying.

do you think the inventor of the first microscope knew beforehand that he was paving the way for the scientific field of microbiology? do you think the first bacteriologists knew that their pioneering work would eventually lead to the discovery of antibiotics and revolutionize modern medicine?

it's impossible to know exactly what consequences will follow the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that, whatever happens, it will have a profound impact on how humanity perceives itself and their relationship with the cosmos. whether we're alone in the universe is one of the fundamental questions of science, philosophy, and theology. just because answering it will not make computers run faster or cure cancer doesn't mean it's not worth asking.

Re:

If you aren't devoting all of your resources towards combating the heat death of the universe [wikipedia.org], then pray tell, what sort of short-sighted project are you wasting your time and money on?

Why do you have internet access, or a computer at all? You should be out volunteering your time for better causes, rather than posting to an internet forum that nobody will read in three days' time.

Or, maybe, we can balance doing several of these things at once. SETI@home, Folding@home, Einstein@home, and whatever tickl

Re:

Folding@home is sustaining over 4.2 Petaflops and rising quickly.
You can see statistics here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats [stanford.edu]
And a nice graph charting the rise here: http://img388.imageshack.us/my.php?image=foldinghome20kx2.png [imageshack.us]

I also enjoy reading the Wiki article on the NSA's headquaters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Facilities [wikipedia.org]

It goes on to talk about their own private chip fab, and how they are using an inordinate amount of power. I can only assume they a

Re:you're joking, right?

Hmm, no, the summary does not say that at all. Maybe you misread the '500'? ;)

Come again? FTS:

The top two both break the Petaflops barrier

AKA 1000 TeraFlops.

The top six all run in excess of 400 Teraflops.

(I don't know how many are over the 500Tflop barrier but those are the computers between the 1PetaFlop and 400Tflop mark. ;-)

Re:you're joking, right?

Hmm, no, the summary does not say that at all. Maybe you misread the '500'? ;)

if the summary is correct than most of the top 6 computers run faster than that

Maybe you misread the 'most'? 8)

Whatever the exact number, the summary clearly says that there are at least 2 supercomputers achieving more than 1 Petaflop, which is over twice Seti's performance. So your statement about there being no faster supercomputer than Seti is still incorrect.

Re:

So your statement about there being no faster supercomputer than Seti is still incorrect.

Nah, it's just restin'. ;)

Wily Coyote comments

Wily Coyote certified Genius was said Monday to be disappointed that the Road Runner had yet again managed to elude him but denied that the Road Runner had demonstrated more brains than him.

"Although it may appear that the Road Runner is smarter due to the fact that I have fallen off cliffs, blown myself up and run into brick walls in fact I am significantly more intelligent and am an ACME top engineer"

IBM's Media Minder for Road Runner passed on a single comment

"MIP MIP"

Re:

No! MIPS MIPS!

Re:

I hate to be a pest, but it's Wile E. Coyote.

Incomplete list.

Where's Skynet?

top 10 more important than 500

HP has more systems in the top 500 than IBM

Something tells me it is more impressive to have majority stake in the top 10 super computers than in the remaining 490.

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

Re:

more impressive, yes. more profitable? no.

but i'm glad to see AMD dominating the top 10 spots. i've always had a, perhaps irrational, affinity for AMD as the consummate underdog. plus, they always seemed to have a lower cost-to-performance ratio than Intel chips.

Impressive to what end?

Technically impressive, absolute given, as the current top few offer unique technologies (Cray's Interconnect, IBM's processors).

From a profitability standpoint, undoubtedly the more successful a vendor is closer to the top of the list, the more they undoubtedly had to give up margin-wise for the bragging rights.

From a marketability standpoint, things get a tad awkward I think for the vendors at the top. IBM has Cell and BlueGene showcased, which we all understand can be used to great ends at the expense o

I await with trepidation

I await with trepidation
For a Cray upon my wrist
Because life's a simulation
So I'll give the knobs a twist.

Now reality has schism'd
And I wonder if I'm missed
Because I've gone into recursion
And my manager is pissed.

Burma Shave

Attempt to sensationalize?

I don't think IBM/Los Alamos suddenly plopped down something in response to cray at the last minute (frankly, I don't think you could move that fast).

Any hardware upgrades were almost certainly in plan, and if there were none, they've had 6 months of tuning to extract better numbers oout of what they had.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 6 months, the Cray without any additional hardware managed a better number than RoadRunner without additional hardware. However, such a victory is diminished somewhat by the energy the Cray undoubtedly consumes to acheive what performance they do get.

Looks like Cray jumped the gun...

As others have pointed out, IBM didn't just boost the RoadRunner in response to Cray's claim of being the fastest: they have been quietly adding to it all along.

To me, the Cray Jaguar is actually two machines: an XT4 cluster (which was around 400 Teraflop/s back in June) and the XT5 cluster. Cray completely redesigned the switching architecture, the memory management, and the cooling to create the XT5. The XT5 really is a completely different machine. Cray seem determined to take #1 spot, but combining the XT4 and XT5 clusters for a better overall measurement has the disadvantage of making the XT5 look less efficient.

IBM has retained the crown with a system that has fewer processors and uses half the energy. By comparison, the Jaguar is a lumbering beast that uses far more power and requires far more real estate. However, if you look at the performance of the XT5 alone, those figures get more competetive.

linux stats

Here's the droids you've been looking for:
http://www.top500.org/charts/list/32/os [top500.org]

Linux has dropped to only 77.8%, although specific other linux versions make up another 5% (approx)

And windows has had a huge increase to .2%

Good going! :)

1 out of top 10 runs Windows!

The most amazing thing on the Top500 site is that number 10 runs Windows! W00T! Go, Microsoft, Go!

Re:AES

A device that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second would require about 3*10^51 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.(Wikipedia) [wikipedia.org]

A round can now be done with 16 table lookups and 12 32-bit exclusive-or operations, followed by four 32-bit exclusive-or operations in the AddRoundKey step.

(Wikipedia) [wikipedia.org]

Assuming 14 rounds for your 256 bit encryption thats 42 operations per round. At a trillion operations/second you get 1*10^12/42(love that number)=23,809,523,809, call it 24 billion rounds per second. Divide by a billion billion to try to match Wikipedia's number: 1/24,000,000,000= 41*10^-10. We can add those nine zeros straight over to get 41/3*10^61 years.


Did I do that right?

Re:AES

We can add those nine zeros straight over to get 41/3*10^61 years. Did I do that right?

Close enough. The bigger problem (yes, really) is that you'll be long out of energy even if you built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured 100% of its energy at 100% efficiency for the rest of its lifetime, since each operation requires at least kT/2 = 2*10^-23J under ideal conditions. Even at E=mc^2 you'll only get 8.6*10^69 = 2^233 operations out of the Sun. So even if you could build an ungodly massively parallel computer that could break AES256 in a reasonable time, you wouldn't have the power to operate it.

Re:Is this on the list?

No, because it takes thousands of those to match what the top computers can do.

Look at the specifications for the high end one:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_s1070.html [nvidia.com]
345 GFlops

The bottom of the top500 list is now 12.64 Tflop/s. So to make it to the bottom of the top500, you need 36 top of the line teslas (and that assumes you lose nothing to network issues, which isn't true). So call it at least 40 teslas to get to the bottom of the list.

To get to the top of the list, you'd need about 3500 teslas.