Posted on Monday, November 17 2008 @ 21:14 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
A new TOP500 supercomputer list was unveiled and Intel proudly announced its processors are used inside more than three quarters of the world's fastest supercomputers. Intel chips are used in 379 of the world's top 500 systems, and Intel is powering 49 systems in the top 100.
The 32nd edition of the TOP500 list shows that 379 of the world's top 500 systems, including the third-fastest system in the world, now have Intel inside. According to the list, Intel is powering 49 systems in the top 100. Systems using Intel Xeon quad-core processors dominate the list, holding 288 spots. Using reinvented high-k metal gate transistors, Intel's year-old quad-core 45nm Intel Xeon processor 5400 series is used in 222 systems, including 32 powered by low voltage variants.
Intel-based super computing platforms are playing a pivotal role in a number of research areas, from improving the safety of space exploration to forecasting global climate conditions. More "mainstream" industries, such as financial services and health care, are also using Intel-based systems to achieve faster, more accurate results, to speed the pace of innovation and improve competitive advantage.
In addition to hardware, Intel is delivering to the HPC community a wide range of software tools, including compilers and MPI libraries, which help customers maximize multicore processing and improve the efficiency of clustered solutions. Approximately 75 percent of systems in the Top500 are using Intel software tools.
"We're proud that Intel processors and software tools are playing a significant role in driving the world's most important scientific research and advancements," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "With our multi-core innovation powering so many systems on the TOP500, it's clear that Intel is committed to pushing the boundaries of supercomputing."
Over the past year, Intel has gained significant momentum in high-performance computing, signaled by major collaborations with Cray Supercomputer and NASA. Intel and Cray plan to develop a range of HPC systems and technologies driven by multi-core processing and advanced interconnects. Meanwhile, Intel, SGI and NASA are collaborating on Pleiades, a super computing project which is the No. 3 system on the list, and will enable groundbreaking scientific discovery with a goal of reaching 1 PetaFLOPS in 2009, and 10 PetaFLOPS (or 10,000 trillion operations per second) by 2012.
You can check out the Top500 list
over here.
