The latest semiannual TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers is topped by Fugaku, the same machine that won in June. Built by Fujitsu, Fugaku is three times as fast as its nearest rival.
TOP500 says that competition for its list seems to be lessening, with the full list of 500 systems having the fewest number of new entries since the organization started its tracking. The list is updated every June and November and has tracked the development of supercomputer performance and architecture since 1993. Nevertheless, two brand new systems managed to break into the top 10 list on their first try.
The new top 10 list also includes two supercomputers that are installed in commercial settings rather than research environments.
The slowest system on the list of 500 scored 1.32PFLOP/sec on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, up from 1.23PFLOP/sec recorded in the June 2020 rankings. The HPL benchmark measures how well systems solve a dense system of linear equations.
In a similar vein, the aggregate performance of all 500 systems grew from 2.22 exaflops in June to 2.43 exaflops on the latest list.
From a national standpoint, the U.S. continues to dominate the top 10 with four entries. China has two entries, and Germany, Italy, Japan, and Saudi Arabia each have one. Here are the details.
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