First things first, the IBM Roadrunner system is still at number one and the Cray Jaguar machine at number two. In third place comes the Jugene system at Jülich. New at number six is the Cray Kraken at the University of Tennessee. Spot 14 is reserved for the new Shaheen system at KAUST and at no. 15, there is the new Chinese Dawning 5000A at the Shanghai Supercomputing Center. The Earth Simulator as the only vector system is back at number 22. The no. 128 entry is for the Koi system with the six-core Shanghai chip and at no. 259, we have the Grape-DR, a CPU system with 16 cores.

In terms of performance development Dr. Strohmeier noted that the Roadrunner has slightly fallen back, so we are ready now for the next round of big systems.

In the TOP500 HP is represented with 46% of the machines and IBM with 40%. The TOP50 has different characteristics. IBM is dominant in the TOP50, Cray is second and Sun is third.

If we look at the installed performance, there are hardly any industrial systems in the TOP50 where HPC for research is prominent.

The Chinese share has increased considerably, Dr. Strohmeier stated.

As for the technology, there is a transition from SMP to MPP to Cluster. Clusters represent 80% in the TOP500.

In the TOP50 there is a higher percentage of MPP systems, followed by the clusters.

The types of processor used are Intel Xeon: more than half of the systems are equipped with Intel Xeon with 6% of them using Intel Xeon Nehalem. Opteron comes in second place.

In performance terms, we see that the number of Intel Xeon processor-based systems decreases to benefit the Opteron processors.

If we look at the cores per socket, 76,6% are quad-core and 21,4% are 2 cores.

In the cluster interconnects: GigE and Infiniband are on the rise. GigE is the dominant interconnect use. But in the TOP50 it is different: there it is Infiniband and Proprietary who are prominent.

Dr. Strohmeier also pointed out the absolute power levels: one single system with 7 MegaWatt at Oak Ridge; a few systems with 3 MegaWatt and the majority of systems is well below 1 MegaWatt.

The power efficiency related to processors is mostly 8+1 core. The use of Quad-core is also a question of age. Older technologies are less power efficient. It is related to the interconnects: Infiniband is prominent, followed by proprietary. The systems based on Gigabit Ethernet are less power efficient.