The United States has the two fastest supercomputers in the world, and they are both at U.S. Department of Energy laboratories.
DOE and its National Nuclear Security Administration have two other supercomputers in the top 10.
“DOE’s national labs have some of the brightest minds in the world, which have made America a worldwide leader in high-performance computing hardware, software, and applications,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said in a press release Monday. “We are well-positioned to maintain this leadership as we enter the era of exascale computing, which holds enormous promise for our country and will transform our leadership in science, our economy, and our nation’s security.”
As reported by Oak Ridge Today on Monday, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is still the fastest supercomputer in the world.
It’s the third time that Summit, a IBM-built supercomputer, has been number one on the semiannual TOP500 list of of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Summit, which is used for scientific research, debuted at number one in June 2018. That was the first time since 2012 that the United States had the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Summit retained the top spot in November.
It was still at number one on the list released Monday.
Sierra at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory continues to be the second-most powerful system in the world. Sierra is also an IBM system, and it is focused on national security applications. Sierra climbed from number three to number two in November.
The latest TOP500 list was announced Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany.
Trinity, a Cray system at Los Alamos National Laboratory, ranked seventh on the list. Lassen, an IBM system at Lawrence Livermore, ranked 10th.
In the press release, DOE said the department and its national laboratories have spearheaded America’s high-performance computing effort. That has been an important component of the nation’s overall competitive advantage across the world, the press release said.
“In recent years, the field has become increasingly competitive internationally, with the growing recognition of supercomputers’ extraordinary value as a tool not only of national security, but also of discovery and innovation,” the press release said.
China had the top two supercomputers a year and a half ago.
On Monday’s list, Summit rose from 143.5 petaflops in November to a record 148.6 petaflops now on a High Performance Linpack benchmark test used to determine the TOP500 ranking. That performance is equivalent to about 148,000 trillion calculations per second.
Sierra reported 94.6 petaflops.
The third-ranked system is China’s TaihuLight, with a Linpack score of 93.0 petaflops.
Trinity performed at about 20.2 petaflops, while Lassen was at 18.2 petaflops.
For the first time, all 500 systems on the TOP500 list delivered a petaflop or more on the High Performance Linpack benchmark, with the entry level to the list now at 1.022 petaflops.
See previous story here.
See the TOP500 press release here.
See the TOP500 list here.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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