Conclusions

From the present four releases of the TOP500 we see:

• For positions in the range of 100---500, the performance of the individual systems is increasing by a factor of 2 every year while the total installed performance is increasing by a factor of 1.7 every year.
• The number of systems present in the TOP500 installed in the US, Japan, and Europe is only slightly changing. Japan is installing very powerful MPP systems, thus closing the gap to the worldwide ratio of MPP systems installed.
• The US and Japanese vendors are dominating their home markets, while European vendors are playing only a minor role even in their own region.
• While the shares of the market leader, Cray Research, is continuously decreasing the shares of especially SGI and IBM are increasing.
• In 1994 MPP systems took over the lead over PVP systems in the TOP500 .
• SMP workstation systems entered the TOP500 quite impressively in 1994.
• The number of ECL based systems is strongly decreasing all the time, and by the end of 1994 more than 60% of the systems in the TOP500 were built with CMOS technology.
• A clear trend to the off-the-shelf CPUs can be seen in the TOP500 with 48% of the systems already using these processors.
• In 1994 there is a new trend to nodes being binary-compatible to major workstation families. This trend has the potential to change the TOP500 in the future considerable.

In general, the trends made visible have proven the TOP500 to be a valuable tool. While some of the trends mentioned can also be stated and anticipated without the TOP500 , others are certainly surprising and could not be seen without it.