I.B.M. Blue Gene Still the Fastest Computer

By John Markoff
Blue Gene/L supercomputerI.B.M.’s Blue Gene/L supercomputer. (Photo: Kimberly White/Reuters)

The relatively low-power I.B.M. Blue Gene supercomputer located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory still holds the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer, but the sands beneath it are shifting.

In the latest rankings, released this morning at the annual supercomputing conference being held in Reno, Nev., only one of the world’s top-five fastest computers is a United States Department of Energy system, and three of the top five computers are located outside of the United States.

Six months ago the three fastest supercomputers were Department of Energy machines, and eight of the top ten supercomputers were based in the United States.

Currently three of the top ten machines are still being used by United states weapons laboratories. The Livermore machine was recently bumped up to a speed rating of 478 trillion mathematical operations per second from the its rating of 280 teraflops in June due an increase in the number of processors from 130,072 to 212,992.

The world’s second fastest machine is now a 65,536 processor Blue Gene supercomputer based at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany. Significantly, fourth place went to a Hewlett-Packard supercomputer located at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune, India.

Notably missing from the list is a Sun Microsystems supercomputer that is now being installed at the Texas Advanced Computer Center in Austin, Texas. The computer is projected to have performance as high as 504 teraflops, and Sun had originally hoped the machine would make this year’s Top 500 ranking.

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coolrepublica November 12, 2007 · 4:29 pm

I.B.M is probably the smartest company out there. They’re not flashy, they’re filing patents as if they’re going out of style, and they’re focused. They keep doing what they do best which is make fast supercomputers.

When everybody is talking about Google, Facebook and Microsoft trying to “take over” the Internet, no one seems to remember one of the computing giants that helps power the Internet. I.B.M.

Kudos to I.B.M and their engineers for creating the computers that will power the Internet of tomorrow.

John Brady November 12, 2007 · 5:42 pm

Gee, I hope they’re working on a carbon plasma vessel for nuclear fusion. Oh, wait! Isn’t that the makings of a new comic book super hero? “Pressure Cooker Man”? What better use of a super computer than making better comic books. (And who will be left to read them.)

William O’Connor November 12, 2007 · 7:00 pm

It would be interesting to find out some of the applications these machines are being used for. Would presume that the IBM machine is simulating different types of deep penetrations for nuclear explosions. What machines were used to simulate the “quants” on credit derivatives for the hedge funds? IBM?

Alan Vanneman November 12, 2007 · 10:32 pm

The sands aren’t shifting nearly as much as Mr. Markoff would have us believe. Six months ago, eight of the top ten computers were in the U.S. Now seven of them are, something I guess John forgot to put in his article. Oh, and all of them are made by U.S. companies. Unimpressive journalism, John.

jsun November 12, 2007 · 11:27 pm

the big iron still run things……….enjoy

Ali Isik November 13, 2007 · 7:03 am

How about a few words on the operating systems running on these bad boys?

michael ali November 13, 2007 · 7:17 am

a computer executes 1 instruction at a time -thats a computer -10 instrutions at a time is 10 computers-GOT IT NERDS

William F. Steagall, Sr. November 13, 2007 · 10:11 pm

I was a member of the UNIVAC design team in 1951. We put the first computer into production. It had 5,000 vacuum tubes, and was, for its time, amazingly fast.

Arnav Khorana November 14, 2007 · 1:19 am

India ..is on the World IT map yet again …That is good news but not on IBM ..I feel bad…
IBM is the best in the business and will always be.

Badarinath D Nagarajarao November 14, 2007 · 5:58 am

IBM once again is on the TOP OF COMPUTING world. Be it systems, services and applications. I’m wondering where the speed will reach with this kind of race for speed. By the way India has shown again that it can compete along with BIG GUYS of the computing worlds.

a-dawg November 14, 2007 · 1:01 pm

In characterizing large, complex computer systems, we are still, unfortunately, in a position analogous to that of the proverbial 6 blind men trying to describe an elephant. The Top 500 is only one of a number of ways to measure the capability of a large, complex computer system. Using this result alone (although it is based on the time to solution of a well-specified numerical problem) , is somewhat like ranking computer systems based just on CPU clock speed. As with many, even more complicated issues subject to superficial media coverage, too much attention is paid to this one type of measure.

Jason November 14, 2007 · 1:21 pm

Make way for the charlatans. I love it when contributors like John and WIlliam comment before doing an inkling of research (by clicking on the link provided.) If they had, they might have read the following regarding what’s happening with IBM’s BlueGene supercomputer, 35 miles north of the city:

“Blue Gene Watson’s primary mission is to perform production science computations that could not be successfully undertaken on less powerful computers. Except for periodic maintenance, it runs 24 hours a day seven days a week in production mode.

Approximately 90% of BGW’s computational capacity is devoted to its production science mission. Within that mission BGW has target allocations of 40% protein folding; 40% for other biological simulations; and for 20% for other science. A secondary BGW mission is to enable pioneering computer science research; this mission is often fulfilled through application scaling experiments.”

Before knocking IBM as a patsy for the DOD, perhaps we should recognize that this research in supercomputing will likely contribute to extending our lives at some point by through advancements in bio/medical research. Maybe supercomputing experiments applied to weather patterns and storm prediction could aid air traffic controllers and have an impact on reducing congestion at major airports. Will you poo-poo that as well?

Ken November 20, 2007 · 4:04 pm

The IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer is actually not THE fastest supercomputer in the world. The TACC Ranger supercomputer, running at 500 teraflops, at the University of Texas is supposedly the fastest and smallest supercomputer at the moment.

See: //www.tacc.utexas.edu/research/users/features/alcalde.php

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doswell conner July 11, 2008 · 6:44 pm

Wow, I’d just like to have a IBM 5000 computer, that works of course. For free.