The last time the United States had the fastest computer in the world was in 2012. It was Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at Oak Ridge. It recorded a speed of 17.59 Petaflop/s. The record was made possible by 560,640 processors, which were part of Titan. In 2013, the title went to NUDT Tianhe-2, located in Guangzhou, China. It held the record until 2016 when it lost it to another Chinese supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, this time from Wuxi. In November 2018, IBM launched Summit, the first computer to break the 100 PFLOPS barrier, achieving a speed of 122.3 Petaflop/s. Summit is installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which took over from Lawrence Liver more National Laboratory as a traditional seat of America’s most powerful supercomputer.
source: fortune.com
Despite the IBM’s achievement, the majority of the world’s super computing power still resides in China. Out of the 500 most powerful supercomputers, listed in TOP500, 206 are located in China. The US is down to 124, the lowest count since TOP500 started tracking supercomputers worldwide 25 years ago. The third place goes to Japan, with 36 super machines, while the UK has 22, enough to propel it to the fourth place. France, Germany, and Ireland complete the list of countries with double digits supercomputers with 18, 17, and 12 respectively.
10. Cori
Top speed: 14 petaflops
Total cores: 622,336
Memory:878,592 GB
Power: 3,939 kW
Named after American biochemist Gerty Cori, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Cori is located at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). It is a Cray system, designed in 2016 and its top position on the list was fifth place.
9. Trinity
Top speed: 14.1 petaflops
Total cores: 979,968
Memory: –
Power: 3,844 kW
Built in 2015, Trinity was at the time a new generation supercomputer for Los Alamos National Laboratory, paid by the National Nuclear Security Administration and built by Cray. It is constantly upgraded and the planning merging of its two partitions may easily push it up on the list in the future.
8. Sequoia
Top speed: 17.2 petaflops
Total cores: 1,572,864
Memory: 1,572,864 GB
Power: 7,890.00 kW
A Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, Sequoia was built by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration and installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As soon as it went online, it took the title of the fastest supercomputer in the world from K computer. It lost it just a few months later, to Titan.
7. Titan
source: knoxblogs.com
Top speed: 17.6 petaflops
Total cores: 560,640
Memory: 710,144 GB
Power: 8,209.00 kW
Designed as an upgrade for Jaguar, the previous supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Titan is another of Cray’s designs that held the first place among the world’s fastest supercomputers.
6. Piz Daint
Top speed: 19.6 petaflops
Total cores: 361,760
Memory: 365,056 GB
Power: 2,384.24 kW
The most powerful supercomputer in Europe is located in Switzerland, the Swiss National Computing Center. It is named after the nearby mountain. After an upgrade it received in 2017, it was ranked third in the world but has since slipped in the listings.
5. AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI)
Top speed: 19.9 petaflops
Total cores:391,680
Memory: 417,792 GB
Power: 1,649.25 kW
The only Japanese representative, AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI) features the smallest power consumption on the list, reflecting the frugal Japanese design. It was built in 2017 by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and installed at the University of Tokyo.
4. Tianhe-2
Top speed: 61.4 petaflops
Total cores: 4,981,760
Memory: 2,277,376 GB
Power: 18,482.00 kW
Located in National Supercomputer Center, Guangzhou, Tianhe-2 was the world’s fastest computer from 2013 to 2016.
3. IBM Sierra
source: businessinsider.com
Top speed: 71.6 petaflops
Total cores: 1,572,480
Memory: 1,382,400 GB
Power: 7,438.28 kW
Sierra is installed in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and used for predictive applications in stockpile stewardship by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
2. Sunway TaihuLight
Top speed (Linpack performance): 93 petaflops
Total cores: 10,649,600
Memory: 1,310,720 GB
Power: 15,371.00 kW
Sunway TaihuLight is the first Chinese supercomputer built entirely out of domestic parts, as a response to the US sanctions, which limited China’s ability to import computer chips from American manufacturers. It is installed at National
Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.
1. Summit
source: phys.org
Top speed (Linpack performance): 143,5petaflops
Total cores: 2,397,824
Memory: 2,801,664 GB
Power: 9,783.00 kW
The latest IBM’s supercomputer to hold the top spot and the first to break the 100 petaflops barrier (with a potential peak of 200 petaflops), the summit is located at Oak Ridge. It is 3rd most energy efficient in the world. Summit was financed by the United States Department of Energy.
