The penetration of the supercomputer market by microprocessor based supercomputers and the increased use of SMPs and arrays of SMP is another often debated trend. The trend towards commodity CMOS is now firmly established. In Table 5 we present the number of installations for the different machine architectures used among the TOP500, both world-wide and in the US/Canada.
| Region | MPP | SMP | PVP |
| U.S./Canada | 155 | 74 | 40 |
| share | 58% | 27% | 15% |
| Worldwide | 284 | 110 | 106 |
| share | 57% | 22% | 21% |
In 1994 MPPs moved ahead of PVP and are now clearly the largest architectural category, both in the US and worldwide. SGI made a very strong showing in the SMP category with installing 54 new machines in 1994 alone. In 1995 SMP systems for the first time surpassed also PVP worldwide. This trend is even more clearly visible in the US. The share of SMP systems in the US is 5% higher than world wide. With other vendors considering or announcing to enter the SMP market (DEC and HP), this appears to be the next significant trend. Over the next year we can expect CMOS based SMP systems to replace a significant number of older PVP systems.