The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known (that is, unclassified) computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL, a portable implementation of the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark for distributed-memory computers.
The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The list is updated twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputer Conference in June, the second one is presented in November at the IEEE Super Computer Conference in the USA.
The data on TOP500 was originally copied from the "List of the world's most powerful computing sites", which had been started six months earlier in January 1993 as a not for profit service. TOP500 never was as accurate, up-to-date, unbiased or detailed as the "List", but due to significant corporate sponsorship became used in various marketing materials. After ten years the "List" closed down due to the disheartening lack of recognition.
| Rank | Site/Country/Year | Computer/Processors/Manufacturer | Rmax/Rpeak (GFlops) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory United States/2005 |
BlueGene/L eServer Blue Gene Solution / 131072 (POWER) IBM |
280600/367000 |
| 2 | IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center United States/2005 |
BGW eServer Blue Gene Solution / 40960 (POWER) IBM |
91290/114688 |
| 3 | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory United States/2005 |
ASC Purple eServer pSeries p5 575 1.9 GHz / 10240 (POWER) IBM |
63390/77824 |
| 4 | NASA Ames Research Center United States/2004 |
Columbia SGI Altix 1.5 GHz, Voltaire Infiniband / 10160 (Itanium) SGI |
51870/60960 |
| 5 | Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique France/2006 |
Tera-10 NovaScale 5160 Quadrics 1.6 GHz / 8704 (Itanium2) Bull SA |
42900/55705.6 |
| 6 | Sandia National Laboratories United States/2005 |
Thunderbird PowerEdge 1850 3.6 GHz, Infiniband / 8000 (Xeon) Dell |
38270/60960 |
| 7 | GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan/2006 |
TSUBAME Grid Cluster Sun Fire X64 Cluster, 2.4/2.6 GHz, Infiniband / 10368 (Opteron) NEC/Sun |
38180/49868.8 |
| 8 | Forschungszentrum Juelich Germany/2006 |
JUBL eServer Blue Gene Solution / 16384 (POWER) IBM |
37330/45875 |
| 9 | Sandia National Laboratories United States/2005 |
Red Storm Red Storm Cray XT3, 2.0 GHz / 10160 (Opteron) Cray Inc. |
36190/43520 |
| 10 | The Earth Simulator Center Japan/2002 |
Earth Simulator / 5120 (NEC) NEC |
35860/40960 |