Earth Simulator still supercomputer champion

June 22, 2004 | Source: NewScientist.com News

NEC’s Earth Simulator is still the fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the latest “TOP500” list, announced Monday.

At about half that rate is Thunder, built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, followed by ASCI Q, from Los Alamos National Laboratory. A Chinese supercomputer made the top ten for the first time this year.

Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, who maintains the list, and a collaboration of US computer scientists, have now made available for future use a new suite of seven tests, including the current Linpack test.

They say the suite assesses supercomputers in a more useful way and would include emerging new styles of distributed supercomputing such as the SETI@home project, in which each node is an ordinary PC.