IBM, Intel Lead the Top 500 Supercomputer List

By Stacey Higginbotham | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 | 10:07 AM PT | 1 comment |

The Top 500 organization has put out its twice-annual list of the fastest supercomputers, and there are few surprises. Roadrunner, IBM’s mammoth supercomputer that broke the petaflop record, holds the top spot. Big Blue is also the source of the lion’s share of the computers on the list, at 210, or 42 percent of the total. Intel’s processors comprise three-quarters of the chips in the Top 500 computers.

Notably, power consumption benchmarks (which you can learn more about over at Earth2Tech) were added to the list this year, further proof of how important conservation and energy efficiency have become in the computing world. So while x86 architectures dominate today’s list, with a few appearances from IBM’s Cell processor, it’s possible some supercomputers of the future will go green now that the power consumption is getting measured. One way could be through the use of lower-powered embedded chips being tested as part of a research project on low-power supercomputers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

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