8/13/2019 SC13 Top500 Lists the World's Fastest Computers

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  C13: Top500 lists the world's fastest comp

uters

This year’s supercomputing conference, which is etter!"nown as C13 a

nd ta"es in place in #en$er this wee", egan with the announcement of t

he latest Top500 list of the world’s fastest computers% &ot much has chan

ged at the top since the list, which is updated twice a year, was last comp

iled%

China still holds the top with Tianhe! at the &ational upercomputer Ce

nter in (uang)ho, which has sustained performance of 33%*+ petaflops -

uadrillions of calculations per second.% /n fact, the top 5 systems remaine

d the same and there was only one new addition to the top 10, i) #aint,a Cray C30 system at the wiss &ational upercomputing Centre in 2uga

no% i) #aint also happen to e the most efficient among the top 10%

/4 and supply the ul" of these systems, followed y Cray% 6s in the

C world, /ntel dominates high!performance computing with more than *

percent of the systems on the list using /ntel eon ser$er processors% T

he rest use 64# 7pteron 8 percent., /4 ower * percent. or 69C%

The iggest change in recent years has een the adoption of accelerators

to oost performance on certain high!throughput, parallel wor"loads whi

le "eeping the power manageale% 7f the top 500 systems, 53 now use ac

celeratorsmostly &$idia's Tesla, though a couple ha$e 64# ;ire tream

and /ntel’s eon hi has een coming on strong since it was first announc

ed at the /nternational upercomputing Conference in mid!01%

<arlier today &$idia announced the Tesla =>0, its fastest oard to date fo

r general!purpose (? computing% /n comparison to the =0 which is

ased on the same =epler chip., the =>0 has more stream processor runni

ng at slightly faster speeds and twice as much memory 1(. pushing p

erformance to >%3 teraflops single!precision arithmetic and 1%> teraflops

on doule!precision math% &$idia also announced a deal with /4 to com

8/13/2019 SC13 Top500 Lists the World's Fastest Computers

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ine Tesla (?s with ower!ased systems used for data analytics% / wou

ld not e surprised to hear announcements from 64# or /ntel this wee"

as well%

ut the rapid rise of accelerators may slow down than"s to some changes

in the wor"s% ;or two decades, the Top500 group has used a single test, t

he 2inpac" enchmar" which measures the performance sol$ing a dense

system of linear e-uations, to ran" the world’s fastest computers% 7$er ti

me this led organi)ations to de$elop systems!!most recently ones using a

ccelerators such as (?sdesigned to post the highest possile scores o

n 2inpac", e$en though this did not reflect the real!world performance o

n many high!performance applications%

/n @une, @ac" #ongarra, a computer science professor at the ?ni$ersity of

Tennessee who de$eloped 2inpac" and compiles the Top500 list, announc

ed a new enchmar" called the igh erformance ConAugate (radient

C(., designed to etter reflect the way many supercomputing applicatio

ns fetch data and wor" on it% /t will ta"e some time to phase!in!!and C

( won’t replace 2inpac"!!ut it should pro$ide a etter picture of the rea

l!world performance of the world’s top computers%