The TOP500 Project of the Universities Mannheim and Tennessee

by Hans-Werner Meuer
hans-werner.meuer@rz.uni-mannheim.de

Abstract:

The TOP500 project was initiated in 1993 by Hans Meuer and Erich Strohmaier of the University of Mannheim, Germany. The first TOP500 list was published in cooperation with Jack Dongarra,University of Tennessee,at the 8th Supercomputer Conference in Mannheim. .After publishing the 15th list of the most powerful computers worldwide in June 2000, we take stock: It appeares that the TOP500 list updated every 6 month is of major interest for the worldwide HPC community since it is a useful instrument to observe the HPC-market, to recognize market trends as well as those of architectures and technology. The presentation will focus on the origination and motivation of the project. The performance measure Rmax (best linpack performance) will be discussed and in particular its limitations. The 15th list published in June on the occasion of SC2000 in Mannheim will be examined in some detail. Main emphasis will be on the trends mentioned before and visible through the continuation of the TOP500 list during the last 7 years. Especially the European situation will be addressed in some detail. At the end of the talk our TOP500 Web site, http://www.top500.org, will be introduced.


Last modified: Fri Jun 16 11:39:01 MET DST 2000