K Computer: Fastest supercomputer in the world

The fastest supercomputer that equipped with a Compaq presario c700 battery in the world comes from Japan. With eight quadrillion calculations per second (petaflops), the system has catapulted "K Computer" from Fujitsu to world class and three times the former leader with more than performance on rounds. For the first time in the top ten places in the list released Monday of the "Top 500" no more investment, which does not play at the "petaflop-League." Germany no longer ranks among the top ten. The IBM system "Jugene" from the Forschungszentrum Julich slipped with a capacity of 825 teraflops (trillion calculations per second) from ninth to 12th From space.

Supercomputers for science

Supercomputers are used for very complex calculations in research or in the military, such as for the development and simulation of nuclear bombs. In science, it can be explored, for example, the complex structure and properties of proteins. For huge quantities of data are analyzed. Even in the climate research supercomputer will become increasingly important, let them, for example, HP pf723a products, climate changes and earthquakes be predicted.

80 000 processors in use

Japan had the "Earth Simulator" from the manufacturer NEC long led the list until the HP pb994a was pushed from the throne in 2004. The new computer "K Computer" means in Kobe and will be used by the RIKEN Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. The computational work to take on more than 80,000 processors (CPU), each with eight cores. Unlike the leaders of the recent uses of "K Computer" no graphics or other graphics-acceleration chips. But he is an energy-efficient systems in the list.

Graphics chip (GPU) can also take on simple arithmetic problems in large quantities and thus increase the overall performance. However, for complex calculations are computer chips (CPU) is needed.

Still in November, the number one ranking, the computer "Tianhe-1A" (German for "Milky Way") equipped with ThinkPad x41 tablet battery from the northeastern Tianjin now with 2.56 petaflops per second in second place. In third place was "Jaguar" of the Cray supercomputer specialist who works in the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy at 1.75 petaflops. Positions four and five are occupied again by plants from China and Japan with 1.27 and 1.19 petaflops.

U.S. no longer leads

Long had the U.S. in the use of expensive equipment in the lead and dominated the first ten places with a large margin. In the current list, however, bring countries like Japan and China on strong with two computers that use the Dell inspiron 15 batteries as the power in the Top Ten, the U.S. is still represented by five plants. In the last "Top 500" lists, which is published twice a year, Germany was also repeated with the IBM system "Jugene", which is used for environmental and materials research, represented in the top ten. "Jugene" comes only in the peak performance of approximately one to one petaflop.

The "Top 500" list of the world's fastest supercomputer is among other things, on the initiative of Hans Werner Meuer Mannheim computer scientist published twice a year at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), which takes place this week in Hamburg. The ISC is aligned alternately in the U.S. and Germany.