The fastest, for the time being…
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012 by Roberto Saracco
Sequoia, the fastest supercomputer as of June 2012, clocking at 16.32 Pflops
The Sequoia supercomputer installed at the Livermore National Laboratory has top the list of the fastest supercomputers clocking in at 16.32 petaflops (that is 16.32 million of billions floating point instructions per second), a number so big that is basically impossible to comprehend.
Its number 1 ranking was announced at the International Supercomputer Conference in Hamburg, Germany, where the first 500 fastest supercomputers are ranked twice a year (June and November). It is the first time since November 2009 that a US supercomputer makes the number 1 ranking.
Sequoia has been designed and produced by IBM, it consists of 96 racks and will be used for simulations in several fields related to nuclear science.
Number 2 is now the RIKEN supercomputer installed at the Advanced Institute for Computational science in Japan who held the previous leadership at 10.2 petaflops. Hence Sequoia is fifty per cent faster than RIKEN.
Number 3 is now Mira BlueGene/Q at the Argonne National Laboratory. For the full list check the 500 Top Supercomputers.
Tags: Supercomputer