A publication of the Advanced Simulation & Computing Division, NA-121.2, NNSA Defense Programs
June 2008
NA-ASC-500-08—Issue 7
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Roadrunner in Running for TOP500 and Green500 Lists
Making it onto the TOP500 list of supercomputers is a much sought-after goal. At the end of May 2008, Roadrunner posted a peak performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS running the Linpack benchmark. The test consisted of solving linear equations involving more than 2 million equations and an equal number of unknowns.
The 31st TOP500 list will be released on June 18, 2008, at the Opening Session of the 23rd Annual International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Dresden, Germany. “For me, breaking the petaflop/s barrier is the equivalent of a runner finally running the 100-meter race in 9.5 seconds—a level of performance everyone hopes for but proves elusive to actually achieve,” said Prof. Hans Meuer, general chair of ISC and founder of the TOP500 list.
ISC will acknowledge this historic milestone with a special panel discussion “Roadrunner—the First Petaflop/s System in the World and Its Impact on Supercomputing.” Dr. Andrew White (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Dr. Don Grice (IBM) will participate in the session along with some of the most respected high-performance computing experts from North America, Asia, and Europe. Two authors of the TOP500 list will join them, Dr. Jack Dongarra (University of Tennessee) and Dr. Erich Strohmaier (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).
Visit the TOP500 list at http://www.top500.org/tags/top500.
Submissions for the Green500 list are due on June 18, 2008, and runs from Roadrunner will be submitted to showcase its energy efficiency. The first Green500 list was released at Supercomputing 07, the international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis. The list was started to raise awareness of energy efficiency for improved reliability. See the Green500 at http://www.green500.org/lists/2008/02/green500.php.
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