KEY POINTS:
An IBM BlueGene/L is still the fastest supercomputer on the planet, but there have been some big changes in the top 10.
The benchmark TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers has just been released at the Supercomputing Conference (SC07) in Reno, Nevada.
New Zealand's only entry on the list is still BlueFern, a BlueGene/L system installed at Canterbury University, has slipped from the 99th spot into 176th place.
The 4096-processor system, which is leased along with a p575 supercomputer at a cost of around $4.5 million plus GST over 5 years, has slipped from 25th to 51st spot in the list of academic institutions.
But the TOP500 number one position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration in California continues its dream run.
The BlueGene/L, which has recently undergone a significant upgrade, has lead the list since November 2004, and now achieves a jaw-dropping Linpack benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops, or trillion calculations per second, compared to 280.6 TFlop/s in the last list, released six months ago.
Number two has been taken by IBM's much-vaunted BlueGene/P system - the new version of the 'L' - with its first installation in Germany, clocking up an impressive 167.3 TFlop/s
Another newbie is the New Mexico Computing Applications Centre's SGI-built system based on the Altix ICE 8200 which posted a speed of 126.9 TFlop/s. It is a first system in the new supercomputing centre, so third place is no mean feat.
India made the top 10 for the first time ever, with Computation Research Laboratories' Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL640C with 126.9 TFlop/s at number four.
In fifth, there's another HP Cluster machine belonging to a Swedish government agency was measured at 102.8 TFlop/s.
A Cray XT4 system belonging to the US Department of Energy was measured at 85.4 TFlop/s, enough to see it in ninth spot as the last new system in the top 10 list.
IBM is still leading the way with number of systems in the closely-watched list, with 232 supercomputers - Hewlett-Packard has dropped back behind IBM with 166 systems after taking the lead in the last TOP500 survey six months ago.
Total combined performance of all 500 systems has grown to 6.97 PFlop/s (petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second) compared to 4.92 PFlop/s six months ago and 3.54 PFlop/s one year ago.
Supercomputing stats
Multi core processors are the dominant architecture, with Intel Clovertown quad core chips now used in 102 systems, compared with 19 six months ago. Most other machines utilise dual core processors.
There are 354 systems now using Intel processors, a big increase from 289 systems six months ago. It is the biggest share that Intel has ever had in the 15-year-old rankings.
AMD's Opteron processors have held onto second place, after taking the spot from IBM Power processors six months ago - Power chips are now used in 61 systems, as opposed to 85 on the last list.
