2 List of the TOP25 Sites

The TOP25 list of supercomputer sites is given in Table 1. This list has been established by simply adding the LINPACK performance in Gflop/s of all supercomputers installed at a given site. Generally under a ``site" we have combined supercomputers, which are installed in the same geographical location, and belong to the same organizational unit. Thus all machines belonging to a university on the same campus were added, even though they might be in different departments.

 

1993 Institution Machines Perf.

1 1 National Aerospace Lab. (NAL), Tokyo 1, 116, 278 184.4

2 11 Oak Ridge National Laboratory 3, 54, 102, 405, 499 159.9

3 7 National Security Agency 4, 57, 74, 173, 193, 254, 334 156.5

4 2 Los Alamos National Laboratory 10, 16, 37, 119, 120 155.4

5 12 Sandia National Labs, Albuquerque 2 143.4

6 4 University of Minnesota 13, 17, 164, 227, 346, 347, 124.6 460

7 Natl. Lab. High Energy Physics, Japan 5 98.9

8 Cornell Theory Center 6, 285, 312 96.0

9 Tokyo University 15, 29, 361 83.8

10 Maui HPCC 8, 110, 402, 403 83.7

11 24 Japan Atomic Energy Commission 11, 142, 188, 274, 275 75.9

12 Tohuku University 41, 43, 83, 98 71.3

13 22 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center 18, 81 64.5

14 6 NASA Ames Research Center 26, 78, 145, 163, 496 59.4

15 13 Atmospheric Env. Serv., Dorval, Canada 39, 45, 52 58.7

16 Nagoya University 12, 279 58.5

17 3 US Government, Classified 70, 71, 72, 73 54.8

18 18 National Genetics Res. Japan 14 52.1

19 10 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 36, 77, 221, 223, 446 51.9

20 US Government, Classified 123, 124, 130, 131, 132, 133 50.1

21 Angstrom Partnership, Japan 19, 135 50.1

22 5 NCSA, Univ. of Illinois 24, 146, 261, 262, 357 49.9

23 Jet Propulsion Laboratory 31, 139, 240, 470 40.5

24 Tsukuba University 20 39.8

25 RIKEN, Japan 21 37.2

Total 89 Systems 2098.7

Percentage 17.8% 43.9%

The list does not contain any of the vendor machines. Most of the supercomputer vendors have substantial compute capabilities, which would make the TOP25 centers list. However, the intent of this list is to give an indication where most compute power in terms of scientific and research applications is concentrated. Therefore we decided to list the vendors separately in Table 2.

Finally we note that there a no European sites among the TOP25. Details on the European Centers can be found in a companion article. Most of the top European centers are occupying ranks between 25 and 50 worldwide, starting with the University of Edinburgh at rank 28.

In all tables the column ``machines" lists the machines whose performance have been added to reach the total performance for a site. The integers refer to the ranking of these supercomputers on the TOP500 list. The performance column lists the aggregate performance of all the machines at the site in LINPACK -Gflop/s. An overview of many of the supercomputers in use is [6].

There are several intriguing observations one can make from Table 1. In order to qualify as a top supercomputer site, and installation must have at least a machine with more than 35 Gflop/s performance. Two years ago the cutoff was only 13.7 Gflop/s, and 35 Gflop/s would have placed an institution on rank seven. There has been a tremendous acceleration of available cycles at the top supercomputer centers.

Another significant change is in the geographical distribution. Whereas two years ago there were only four Japanese sites on the TOP25 list, there are now ten sites in 1995. This can be (in part) attributed to an agressive investment in supercomputing technology in Japanese research institutes and universities in early 1994, which led to a wave of supercomputer installations. On the other hand there are currently no European sites among the TOP25.

The list also shows how much U.S. government spending dominates the supercomputing world. All 14 U.S. sites directly or indirectly are funded by the U.S. government. There are 10 U.S. government laboratories/centers (4 Department of Energy, 3 classified, 2 NASA, 1 Dept. of Defense), and the four U.S. universities receive their support for supercomputers from the NSF or DoD (Minnesota). However, also the foreign sites are also all falling into the same category, and are government institutions in their countries.