The Top500 supercomputer-ranking project has rated the US Department of Energy’s Sequoia as the world’s most powerful high-performance machine. This marks the return of a US computer to the top spot in the rankings of the Top500 project, in which three experts rate supercomputers based on the HPL benchmark every six months. Sequoia, housed at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is a 1.6-GHz IBM BlueGene/Q system running Linux. It simulates nuclear-weapons testing. The computer has 1.57 million processor cores and performs at 16.32 petaflops. . The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration originally announced Sequoia’s construction in February 2009 and upgraded the system after it placed 17th in the previous edition of the Top500. A US computer led the Top500 list until November 2010, when the Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer—now ranked fifth—was deemed the most powerful. The Japanese K Computer subsequently gained the top spot and is now in second place. The new US Argonne National Laboratory supercomputer Mira, also an IBM BlueGene/Q system with 786,432 cores, is third. The most powerful system in Europe and listed at fourth on the list is SuperMUC, an IBM iDataplex system housed at Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany. And Jaguar, previously the fastest US system, is now in sixth place. (BBC)(PC World)(Top500)
