Supercomputers and Such

Top 500

So another 6 months has passed and the list of the top 500 fastest computers has been updated. BlueGene has now held the top spot longer than any other computer, 2 and half years. I found a way to see the total FLOPS of all 500 computers, which has been telling. On average, the total FLOPS the top 500 can do increases about 35-36% every 6 months. The top computer of any given year typically can do the same number of FLOPS as the total of all 500 from about 4 years earlier.

This past 6 months, there seemed to be a shift towards mass-building of supercomputers instead of building just one big one as there wasn't much change at the top of the list but over half the list are new entries. Many of these were groups of computers all running at the same number of FLOPS. It may help that the price of running supercomputers has dropped dramatically making it more cost-effective to more institutions to build supercomputers. According to answers.com, the price of performing at one GFLOPS has dropped from $30,000.00 in 1997 to $0.42. A typical PC processor can now perform 5 to 10 GFLOPS.