In 1993 the parallel vector processors (PVP) clearly dominated the TOP500 . As can be seen in Fig. 6, 60% to 70% of the installed systems came from this class. Only up to 37% of the systems came from the class of massively parallel processor systems (MPP). In 1994 this situation changed drastically. At the end of 1994 for the first time the PVP systems were no longer the dominating architecture in the TOP500 . Their share decreased to 40%, while the share of MPP systems ros e to 48%. MPP systems are now the dominating class of systems in the TOP500 . Additionally a new class of architectures entered the TOP500 in 1994: the class of symmetrical multiprocessor workstations (SMP). While those systems were not present in the 1993 lists, we now have a very strong rising share with already 13% of all systems coming from this class.
Figure 6: The evolution of the architectures as it can be seen in the TOP500 .
As derived in the last report [2], Japan was very much behind in 1993 with the number of installed MPP systems. This also changed during 1994. The number of installed MPP systems in Japan with 33% is still behind the world wide average of 48% but by far not as much as in 1993. The US is still leading with the number of installed MPP systems, with about 60% of the US systems coming from this class. In 1994 the new class of SMP systems entered the list. We found that in Japa n almost no SMP systems have been installed yet, while the share of these systems is quite equal to the rest of the world.
Looking at the installed performance in the different classes for the different regions we see that the MPP systems installed in Japan are quite powerful. Especially the VPP500 systems from Fujitsu have a great impact here. This class of scalable parallel vector processors implemented in CMOS does not play an important role outside of Japan yet, but it is already entering the European market. The possible impact of these systems was the reason for Gordon Bell to say ``They may not get the U.S. market, but they'll get the world market.'' [3].