- The first two Cray 1 Run Systems had been installed in 1980 at the MPI for Plasma Physics in Munich and at the German Aerospace Agency DLR. Since then supercomputers have continuously been used in Germany. Big machines have often been found very early in Germany. The Cray 2 with serial number 6 [l]#14 in Germany for example was installed at the University of Stuttgart in 1986. The situation in Germany is special because Siemens Nixdorf has quite successfully been selling Fujitsu VPs in Germany since 1985. They have never manufactured a supercomputer by themselves and in the meantime they are also marketing and selling the KSR systems in Germany.
At present we see 59 systems in the TOP500. But the first one of them is only at position 49 in the world and position 3 in Europe. This already shows a lack of big MPP systems in Germany. The ratio of the installed vector systems to MPP systems is quite similar to the world average. But the installed MPP systems are typical low and midrange systems installed as experimental systems. That is why the percentage of the overall installed performance in Germany (5.2%) is, by a factor of two, lower than the percentage of systems (12%). Until now there is no big MPP production system in use in Germany.
[l]Manufacturers Looking at the distribution concerning the manufacturers (Fig. 13.7 and 13.8) we see Cray Research leading with 19 systems (33%), followed by SNI with 12 systems (20%), the latter being manufactured by Fujitsu. The KSR systems sold by SNI are counted separately. This percentage of SNI/Fujitsu Systems is unusually high. SNI almost only sold systems in Germany. Only one system in France and one in Austria are present in the TOP500. But the management at SNI believes that such a strong position in the home market is not enough, for an own supercomputer development to pay off. Including the five KSR systems, four of which are sold by SNI, SNI is almost equal with Cray Research. With regards to the installed performance SNI is in lead of Cray. This is mainly because of the big LINPACK performance of the top VP systems compared to the usual YMP8 systems presently installed in Germany. With the first C90 systems coming soon this will change. But on the other hand there will also be two VPP500 systems in Germany shortly.
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While Thinking Machines seems to be slightly underrepresented, especially in the big computing centers, Convex seems to have quite a good position in Germany. Intel sold two systems to big computing centers along with smaller ones at universities and shows a market share similar to the one worldwide. Parsytec, the only German supercomputer manufacturer, was only able to position four systems in the TOP500, two of them installed in Germany. They waited quite a long time for the Inmos T9000 chip to come and are currently switching to the Power PC 601 chip as the central processor. The GCeL systems in the TOP500 are based on nodes with the older T805 chip. So the weak position of Parsytec hides the fact that those four systems have 1024 or 512 nodes, which are quite respectful numbers. By the way, both systems in Germany are installed in the state of Northrhine-Westphalia where the company is located.
Looking at the distribution of the lander (Fig. 13.9 and 13.10) we see Northrhine-Westphalia ahead with 14 systems followed by Bavaria with 11 and Baden-Württemberg with 10 systems. This does not come as a surprise since these are the biggest lander in Germany. In the lander of the former Democratic Republic we find only one system in the TOP500 which is at position 500. This shows the big need for those lander to catch up when it comes to supercomputers.
Looking at the installations at university computing centers we see a great amount of VP systems especially in some of the lander of Germany, where there are almost only VP systems like in Hessen. Also all big VP systems are installed at university centers. Most of the MPP systems are also installed at universities, but not only in the computing centers but also at institutes.
[l]#of Germany The big governmental research centers like KFA in Jülich [l]KFA: #8, 10, 22, 40, LRZ in Munich [l]LRZ: #9, 28 and the Climate Computing Center in Hamburg [l]DKRZ: #13, 31, 35 all have Cray systems installed as main production machines. The Climate Computing Center in Hamburg will be the first German site to install a Cray C90 system in May '94. Only the German Aerospace agency (DLR) [l]DLR: #1, 25, 46 recently switched from a Cray system to a NEC SX3 which is the most powerful system in Germany at the moment.
Looking at the industry you find almost nothing but Cray systems or Convex systems installed. Especially all the automotive vendors [o]Autom.:#17, 21, 32, 44, 47, 49 have installed Cray systems. There are also a few VP systems at industrial sites especially in the chemical industry [l]Chemical: #23 and in the electronic industry[l]Electronic: #24. But the last one is an installation at Siemens, not to be mixed up with Siemens Nixdorf. This system is used for chip design and that is why we do not count it as a vendor system but as an industrial site.
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All in all, Germany has quite a good position in Europe, with regards to the number of installed systems, but can easily fall behind in the development of the MPP sector.
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