Once again tops the Top500 list
According to the latest edition of Top500, a biannual list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, China’s Tianhe-2 (“Milky Way-2” in English) continues to be the most powerful supercomputer on the planet. This is the fifth time in a row that the 3,120,000-core beast developed by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) has topped the list.
This isn’t surprising in the least if one considers what Top500’s Jack Dongarra (the man behind the all-important Linpack benchmark) had to say about the TH-2 a couple of years back. After being briefed about the TH-2 capabilities in May, 2013 — while the machine was still undergoing assembly and testing — Dongarra was of the view that the Chinese supercomputer would go on to have a fairly long reign at the top, with no competitor in sight until at least 2015.
But China is not the overall leader in this field. That distinction belongs to the U.S., a country that accounts for nearly every second machine on the biannual list. And if that is not enough, five of the ten most powerful supercomputers in the world are also from the States.
Coming back to the TH-2, here is a quick rundown of its:
- Processors: 32,000 Intel Xeon CPU’s + 48,000 Xeon Phi’s (+ 4096 FT-1500 CPU’s frontend)
- Interconnect: Proprietary high-speed interconnection network, TH Express-2
- Memory: 1 PB
- Storage: Global Shared parallel storage system, 12.4 PB
- Cabinets 125 + 13 + 24 = 162 compute/communication/storage cabinets
- Power: 17.8 MW
- Cooling: Closed air cooling system
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1M1yuuw
