Which country has the most powerful supercomputer? Those looking for answers to this question will sooner or later end up in the official Top500 list of the most powerful mainframes in the world. But this list is far from complete, reveals the computer scientist in charge of it.
Jack Dongarra recently contributed to the most recent edition of the Top500 list and for the first time, the American system Frontier – see video – a supercomputer with computing power in the exaflop range (one trillion floating point calculations per second) landed at the top. But in an interview with the science magazine “New Scientist”, Dongarra admits that the most powerful computers in the world may not even appear in the rankings.
To be on the list, you must submit a benchmark result
Only what is submitted is stated – and that is by no means the case with every system. To be included in the Top500 list, operators must complete the “LINPACK” benchmark test and submit the result. The computing power is measured in flops, or floating point calculations per second. The Top500 ranking is then compiled on the basis of this.
Secret services and the military, however, are reluctant to look at their maps. They don’t report their systems to the Top500 list makers – and operate “under the radar” with their mainframes. But even private companies that use supercomputers for internal purposes often don’t participate. Even supercomputers that are used purely for science are not in the list – such as the Blue Waters system of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the US.
Not every supercomputer excels at “LINPACK”
While the military and secret services obviously don’t reveal anything about supercomputers for national security reasons, research institutions and private companies have other reasons. Not every supercomputer performs well in the “LINPACK” benchmark: there are powerful systems designed for a very specific task that do not perform particularly well in general benchmark tests. Here the operators consciously refrain from making comparisons.
Also, some operators only pass results if they expect to benefit from being listed. For months there have been indications that China has two supercomputers with exascale performance, but there is no official information about the machines. The existence of mainframe computers is apparent, for example, from scientific publications in which the calculation method must be outlined. Secret mainframes that are not in the Top500 list may also exist in other countries, such as the US.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
