• About
    • About Us
    • What We Cover
  • Advertise
    • Advertise
    • Our Advertisers
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Send News
  • Subscribe

Oak Ridge Today

  • Home
  • Sign in
  • News
    • Business
    • Community
    • Education
    • Government
    • Health
    • Police and Fire
    • U.S. Department of Energy
    • Weather
  • Sports
    • High School
    • Middle School
    • Recreation
    • Rowing
    • Youth
  • Entertainment
    • Arts
    • Dancing
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Television
    • Theater
  • Premium Content
  • Obituaries
  • Classifieds

ORNL’s Titan still No. 2 as China triples Top500 supercomputers

Posted at 9:33 am November 16, 2015
By Oak Ridge Today Staff Leave a Comment

 

Titan Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was once ranked as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, but it has since been ranked number two. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

 

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remained at number two on a list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers released Monday. China tripled the number of its systems on the semiannual Top500 list, while the number of systems in the United States fell to the lowest point since the list was created in 1993.

The Tianhe-2 supercomputer in China again maintained the number one spot on the list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. It’s the sixth consecutive time Tianhe-2 has been the top supercomputer. The system was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology.

Titan was once the most powerful supercomputer.

The 46th edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was released Monday.

“Overall, change at the top of the list is again minor, with only two new systems in the Top 10—the Trinity supercomputer built by Cray and jointly deployed by the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and the Hazel-Hen system built by Cray and installed at the HLRS-Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart in Germany,” a press release said.

“In the bigger picture, China nearly tripled the number of systems on the latest list, while the number of systems in the United States has fallen to the lowest point since the TOP500 list was created in 1993,” the release said. “China is also carving out a bigger share as a manufacturer of high-performance computers with multiple Chinese manufacturers becoming more active in this field.”

Advertisement

Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way-2, led the list with a performance of 33.86 petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second, on a Linpack benchmark test.

“Keeping its hold on the No. 2 spot is  Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” the release said.

Titan, the top system in the United States and one of the most energy-efficient systems on the list, achieved 17.59 petaflops on the Linpack benchmark.

The press release said the only new entries in the Top 10 supercomputers on the latest list are Trinity at No. 6 and Hazel-Hen at No. 8. Trinity is a Cray XC system that has 301,056 cores and achieved 8.1 petaflops. Trinity is managed and operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories under the Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scale, or ACES, partnership. Hazel-Hen is also a Cray XC system installed in Germany at the HLRS-Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart, and it features 185,088 cores and achieved 5.6 petaflops.

Here is more information from the press release:

Six of the Top 10 systems were installed in 2011 or 2012, Tianhe-2 in 2013 and only Trinity, Hazel-Hen, and Shaheen II in Saudi Arabia were installed in 2015. This low level of turnover among the top supercomputers reflects a slowing trend that began in 2008.

A detailed analysis of the latest TOP500 list will be presented Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the SC15 conference on high performance computing and networking in Austin, Texas. At that time, the full list will also be published at TOP500.org.

Among the significant changes to this list from the July 2015 list is the sharp decline in the number of systems in the United States, now at 200. This down from 231 in July and is the lowest number of systems installed in the U.S. since the list was started in 1993.

The European share has fallen to 108 systems compared to 141 on the last list and is now lower than the Asian share, which has risen to 173 systems, up from 107 last time.

In Asia, China made a great leap to 109 systems, nearly three times the 37 the country had on the previous list.  Japan’s share dropped slightly to 36 systems, compared to 40 last time.

China’s role in high performance computing is also increasing in the manufacturing arena, with Lenovo now being counted among the vendors of systems on the TOP500 list. Following its acquisition of IBM’s x86 business last year, Lenovo now has 25 systems in list, up from just three systems on the July 2015 list. Some systems that were previously listed as IBM are now labeled as both IBM/Lenovo (nine systems) and Lenovo/IBM (five systems). Sugon, a vendor from China, has overtaken IBM in the system category with 49 systems.

At the same time, Cray Inc., a company long associated with supercomputers, is on a resurgence and emerges in the latest list as the clear leader in performance, claiming a 24.9 percent share of installed total performance (up from 24 percent). IBM takes the second spot with a 14.9  percent share, down from 23 percent last July. Hewlett Packard is third with 12.9 percent, down from 14.2 percent six months ago. Thanks to three system from China’s National University for Defense Technology (Tianhe-2, Tianhe-2 LvLiang, and Tianhe-1A), China now contributes 9.2 percent of the total performance of the list, down from 10.9 percent.

Slowing trend in performance growth

Since its inception in June 1993, the TOP500 list has served as a consistent measure of the performance growth of supercomputers, since all systems are ranked according to performance running the same Linpack benchmark application. As noted at the release of the 44th list in November 2014, the overall list-by-list growth rates of performance continues to be at historically low values for the last two years.

The performance of the last system on the list (#500) has systematically continued to lag behind historical trends for the last six years and now clearly continues to run on a different growth trajectory than before.  From 1994 to 2008 it grew by 90 percent per year, but since then has grown by just 55 percent per year.

This lag in the overall average performance of all 500 systems is noticeably influenced by the low turnover among very large systems at the top of the list. Recent installations of very large systems – up to June 2013 – have counteracted the reduced growth rate at the bottom of the list, but with few new systems at the top of the past few lists, the overall growth rate is now slowing. This offers an indication that the market for the very largest systems might currently behave differently from the market of mid-sized and smaller supercomputers.

On the latest edition of the list, the No. 500 system recorded a performance of  204.3 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second), compared to 164 teraflop/s in July. The last system on the newest list was listed at position 369 in the previous TOP500.

Other highlights from the 46th list

  • Total combined performance of all 500 systems has grown to 420 Pflop/s, compared to 361 Pflop/s last November and 309 Pflop/s one year ago. This increase in installed performance also exhibits a noticeable slowdown in growth compared to the previous long-term trend.
  • There are 80 systems with performance greater than 1 petaflop/s on the list, up from 67 last July.
  • The No. 1 system, Tianhe-2, and the No. 10 system, Stampede, use Intel Xeon Phi processors to speed up their computational rate. The No. 2 system, Titan, and the No. 7 system, Piz Daint, use NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate computation.
  • A total of 104 systems on the list are using accelerator/co-processor technology, up from 90 in July 2015. Sixty-six of these use NVIDIA chips, three use ATI Radeon, and there are now 27 systems with Intel’s Xeon Phi processors. Four systems use a combination of Nvidia and Intel Xeon Phi accelerators/co-processors.
  • Ninety-eight percent of the systems use processors with six or more cores, 88 percent use eight or more cores, and 47 percent ten or more cores.

About the TOP500 List

The first version of what became today’s TOP500 list started as an exercise for a small conference in Germany in June 1993. Out of curiosity, the authors decided to revisit the list in November 1993 to see how things had changed. About that time they realized they might be onto something and decided to continue compiling the list, which is now a much-anticipated, much-watched and much-debated twice-yearly event.

The TOP500 list is compiled by Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Martin Meuer of Prometeus, Germany.

Filed Under: College, Education, Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Top Stories, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: China, DOE, Jack Dongarra, National University of Defense Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, supercomputers, Tianhe-2, Titan, Titan supercomputer, Top500, U.S. Department of Energy, United States, University of Tennessee

Advertisements


 

Join the club!

If you appreciate our work, please consider subscribing. Besides helping us, your subscription will give you access to our premium content.

Most of our stories are free, brought to you by Oak Ridge Today with help from our members—advertisers, subscribers, and sponsors.

But some are premium content, available only to members. Those are in-depth, investigative, or exclusive stories that are available only on Oak Ridge Today. They generally require at least four hours to report, write, and publish.

You can subscribe for as little as $5 per month.

You can read more about your options here.

We currently offer five primary subscription options to readers, and they include benefits.

Basic

  • Basic monthly subscription ($5 per month)—access premium content
  • Basic annual subscription ($60 per year)—access premium content

Pro

  • Pro monthly subscription ($10 per month)—access premium content, get breaking news emails first, and submit one press release or public service announcement per month
  • Pro annual subscription ($100 per year)—save $20 per year, access premium content, get breaking news emails first, and submit one press release or public service announcement per month

Temporary

  • Temporary access ($3 per week for two weeks)

We also have advanced subscription options. You can see them here.

We also accept donations. You can donate here.

If you prefer to send a check for a subscription or donation, you may do so by mailing one to:

Oak Ridge Today
P.O. Box 6064
Oak Ridge, TN 37831

Thank you for your consideration and for reading Oak Ridge Today. We appreciate your support.

Commenting Guidelines

We welcome comments, but we ask you to follow a few guidelines:

1) Please use your real name, including last name. Please also use a valid e-mail address.
2) Be civil. Don't insult others, attack their character, or get personal.
3) Stick to the issues.
4) No profanity.
5) Keep your comments to a reasonable length and to a reasonable number per article.

We reserve the right to remove any comments that violate these guidelines. Comments held for review, usually from those posting for the first time, may not post if they violate these guidelines. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Thank you also for reading Oak Ridge Today and for participating in the discussion.

More information is available here.

More Education News

Learn why bugs are good

Submitted Every bug has a purpose. Did you know that very few caterpillars reach their mature size because birds gobble them down? It is estimated that one pair of chickadees must find 6,000 caterpillars to feed one … [Read More...]

Secret City Academy student charged with terrorism after alleged shooting, bomb threats

A Secret City Academy student was charged with terrorism and other crimes after allegedly threatening to shoot people and use a bomb at the school on Friday, Anderson County's district attorney general said. This is the … [Read More...]

ORHS Masquers presents ‘Into the Woods’

Oak Ridge High School Masquers, the school’s extracurricular drama program, is presenting "Into the Woods," the Stephen Sondheim musical based on the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales, in four performances this … [Read More...]

Roane State employees receive excellence awards

Four Roane State Community College employees have been recognized as winners of the prestigious Excellence Award bestowed by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development. NISOD has been named the … [Read More...]

Tennessee Holocaust Commission accepting student entries for 2022 contest

“The Holocaust is a lesson in human (and inhuman) history that took place because of hate, bigotry, indifference—all characteristics that know no bounds. These traits spread like wildfire. If we remain indifferent to … [Read More...]

More Education

More U.S. Department of Energy News

Disposing of uranium waste could cost at least $7.2 billion

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates it could cost at least $7.2 billion to convert and dispose of tens of thousands of cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride, a dangerous, corrosive waste byproduct of the uranium … [Read More...]

Y-12 now getting power from Pine Ridge substation

Submitted The Y-12 National Security Complex flipped the switch on a new era as crews finalized the process of moving the entire site’s electrical supply to the new Pine Ridge substation. In June, the Building … [Read More...]

DOE picks Idaho for nuclear test reactor

The U.S. Department of Energy has decided to build a nuclear test reactor at Idaho National Laboratory to study fuels and materials. Besides INL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory had been considered as a potential site … [Read More...]

DOE bus tours restart in Oak Ridge

U.S. Department of Energy public bus tours have resumed in Oak Ridge after a two-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The tours began running again on July 11, and they are scheduled to continue through … [Read More...]

Crews prepare former ORNL reactors for demolition

The U.S. Department of Energy and cleanup contractor UCOR are preparing to demolish research reactor facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Crews are nearing the final stages of deactivation inside two former … [Read More...]

More DOE

Recent Posts

  • ORAU launches new app with a variety of resources available, including hundreds of STEM internships, fellowships and research opportunities
  • Disposing of uranium waste could cost at least $7.2 billion
  • Y-12 now getting power from Pine Ridge substation
  • Man sentenced to 8 years after fleeing, crashing, attempting carjackings
  • Three Ohio residents die in two-vehicle crash
  • DOE picks Idaho for nuclear test reactor
  • TBI investigating man’s death
  • Luminarias to feature peace messages
  • Oak Ridge tennis court dance is Thursday
  • DOE bus tours restart in Oak Ridge

Search Oak Ridge Today

About Us

About Oak Ridge Today
What We Cover

How To

Advertise
Subscribe

Contact Us

Contact Oak Ridge Today

Copyright © 2022 Oak Ridge Today