Supercomputers, powered by Linux

The biannual list of the worlds' top 500 Supercomputers was released on 1st June and The Linux Magazine reports that 455 (91%) of them run some version of Linux!

Now I think that is a great ad for Linux to pull in more users "Runs Supercomputers, and your desktop". What say?

Some more interesting stats from the Top 500 site
USA has the highest number of supercomputers in the list (282) as well as the fastest one, the Cray XT Jaguar, but China has moved to the No. 2 position with 24 supercomputers in the shortlist, tying with Germany.
Two Chinese supercomputers are in the Top 10, including the Nebulae at No.2  which is actually the fastest in theoretical peak performance. (Now when will we see India up there?!)
India has 4 supercomputers in the top 500 list. The fastest is EKA owned by Tata Sons at No. 33. The remaining supercomputers are in IIT Kanpur, IITM (Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology) and C-DAC.
85% of the computers use Quad Core processors with 408 systems (80.4%) using Intel Processors
IBM sells the most supercomputers followed by HP.

An interesting interactive treemap of this data is available on the BBC website.

By the way this is how the fastest supercomputer looks (The Cray Jaguar XT from whatsthelatest.net)





For me, the top 500 supercomputer list is equivalent to the Fortune 500. It inspires awe, excitement, envy and yes, patriotic pride. I look for the day when an Indian supercomputer is at the top of this list!

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