in the June 2004

20 June 2004

187 (37.4%) of the June-2004 TOP500 use Myrinet Technology

The TOP500 list (www.top500.org), published twice a year since 1993 coordinated with the ISC conference in June and SC conference in November, ranks supercomputers worldwide according to their performance on the Linpack benchmark. The 23rd TOP500 list was released today prior to ISC2004 in Heidelberg.

The June-2004 TOP500 list includes 106 Myrinet^® clusters, up from 73 in the November-2003 list. A tabulation of these 106 Myrinet clusters appears at the end of this news item. In addition, the June-2004 list includes 81 HP Superdome^TM/Hyperplex^TM systems, down from 121 in the November-2003 list. Hyperplex and HyperFabric^TM are HP brands for Myrinet communication between HP Superdome SMP hosts.

Thus, a total of 187 (37.4%) of the June-2004 TOP500 supercomputers use Myrinet technology.

The TOP500 authors note that the June-2004 list had the highest turn-over rate in the 11-year history of the TOP500 list. The systems ranking #243 and lower in the November-2003 list, more than half of the list, didn't make it into the June-2004 list unless they were upgraded to higher performance. It required a performance level of at least 624 Gflops to make the June-2004 list, versus 403 Gflops for the November-2003 list. Of the 73 Myrinet clusters in the November-2003 list, 22 failed to make the June-2004 list, and 3 reported higher performance results that kept them on the list. The 106 Myrinet clusters in the June-2004 list are thus composed of:

• 51 carried over from the November-2003 list,
• 3 systems that reached higher performance through upgrades or better Linpack runs, and
• 52 new Myrinet clusters (!) in the June-2004 list.

Even at the stratospheric performance levels of the June-2004 TOP500, 7 of the Myrinet clusters are listed as self-made.

Two Myrinet clusters made the top 10. The NCSA Tungsten cluster dropped from the #4 to the #5 position, and Red Grid, one of the 52 new Myrinet clusters, ranked #10. Red Grid was integrated by Dawning, and is composed of 640 quad-2.2GHz Opteron systems. We noted in a 9-March-2004 press release that Red Grid was expected to be the fastest computer in China. In addition, it is the first system in China to enter the top 10 of the TOP500 list.

Here is our tabulation of the 106 Myrinet clusters in the June-2004 TOP500. Most of the Myrinet clusters are identified in the list as such, and others (e.g., #195) are known to us to be Myrinet clusters. Similarly, if the computer has a name, we list it below, even though that name may not appear in the TOP500 list. The full configurations of these clusters, including the types and numbers of hosts, can be found in the list at http://www.top500.org/.

Congratulations to the TOP500 authors, and to all of the TOP500 sites. We are now looking forward to the November-2004 TOP500 list.

20 June 2004