4 Conclusions

The analysis of the data provided by the TOP500 report has led us to a number of conclusions concerning the state of HPC in the U.S. at the end of 1995. Some of these conclusions are:

• The U.S. is the clear world leader both as producer and as consumer of high performance computers. This leadership position has been even more strengthened in 1995.
• Microprocessor based supercomputers are about to bring a major change in the accessibility and affordability of supercomputers. The installed base of supercomputer Gflop/s almost doubled in the last six months of 1995 in the US. This increase is due to a large number of medium to small installations of machines based on the IBM Power2 and the SGI/MIPS R8000 processors.
• MPPs now account for more that half of all installed supercomputers worldwide and in the US. Market penetration by MPPs worldwide is now at the same level as the US. SMP system are used more frequently in the US than worldwide. This may be an indication of a trend towards replacing older PVP systems with SMP systems.

Generally the TOP500 list has proven itself to be an extremely valuable tool for evaluating trends in the HPC market. Future releases of this report should enable the HPC community to track important developments much more accurately than in the past.