The situation in Europe, looking at the number of systems installed, has not changed dramatically (Fig. 1 and 2). Some countries have now more, others less machines. Germany is the leader again with only 51 machines (36% of Europe) and an Rmax of 148 Gflop/s (32% of Europe), compared to 59 computers and 75 Gflop/s in 1993, followed by Great Britain and Ireland 26 (18%) and an Rmax of 114 Gflop/s (25%). The United Kingdom overtook France that held 23 (16%) and 78 GFlop/s (17%), Scandinavia 14 (10%) and 16 Gflop/s (4%), Southern Europe 10 (7%) and 19 Gflop/s (4%), Austria and Switzerland 10 (7%) and 50 Gflop/s (11%) and in Benelux 9 (6%) and 22 Gflop/s (5%).
Figure 1: The distribution of systems on the different countries in Europe.
Figure 2: The distribution of performance on the different countries in Europe.
A close look at the 1993 and 1994 list shows that some countries or regions have a growth in Rmax that is higher than the average. The biggest jump in speed did Switzerland, see the comments on Austria below. Starting with 8.9 Gflop/s in 1993 the growth factor became 5.4 to 48 Gflop/s, followed by Scandinavia with a factor of 3.6 and United Kingdom with 2.7. Most of the other European countries increased their computing power by a factor between 2.2 and 2.
It is remarkable that some countries installed several, extremely powerful computers, others with a comparable economical structure very small ones. For example in 1994 in Switzerland 9 machines (no. 50, 58, 64 ...) and 48 Gflop/s are available, while Austria has access to only one TOP500 computer, an Intel XP machine with 2 Gflops (no.. 285). A similar situation can be found in Italy, in 1993 about 3.6 Gflop/s in 1994 only 4.4 Gflop/s, a factor of 1.2. It seems that in Europe some nations are ``underdeveloped'' concerning high-performance computing.
In the sense of economical strength and gross national product Germany, UK, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands belong to the best equipped nations, while Austria and Italy stroll behind. Although this measure is a very rough one, the general trends can be seen clearly.