ISC 2019- China Leads in Supercomputers

On June 17, ISC High Performance 2019 was hosted in Frankfurt, Germany. The conference announced a list of the world’s TOP500 Supercomputers. China led the way with, 219 in the TOP500 , while the United States came second with 116, with Japan at 29, France with 19, Britain with 18 and Germany with 14. The list began in 1993, and is released every six months to keep a current record of the world’s top supercomputers. This is the fourth consecutive list where China has had the most supercomputers, dating back to November of 2017.

Although China leads in sheer numbers, the United States still leads in performance levels, accounting for 38.4 percent of performance output on the list measured by High Performance Linpack (HPL), with China just at 29.9 of the performance total.

the Sunway Taihu Light Supercomputers
the Sunway Taihu Light Supercomputers (Source: CCTV news)

In terms of supercomputer manufacturers, three Chinese companies ranked in the top 3, with Lenovo, Inspur and Sugon producing 173, 71 and 63 respectively. In the TOP500’s 53rd edition, the top 4 supercomputers remain unchanged, with IBM’s Summit and Sierra taking the top two sports, followed by Chinese TaihuLight and Tianhe-2A. For the first time in the list’s 26 year history, all 500 included on the list deliver over a petaflop on the HPL benchmark. The HPL benchmark measures and tests various attributes of supercomputing performance. The minimum HPL benchmark required for entry onto this edition of the list is 1.022 petaflops.

While the top of the list remained largely unchanged, the overall quality of the TOP500’s performance capacity shows encouraging process in the area of supercomputing.

Featured Image Source: Lenovo