AMD-based Supercomputer Named Fastest In the World

By Joseph F. Kovar, Nov. 16, 2009

More of the top supercomputers in the world are running AMD processor or graphics technology than ever before, but Intel continues to dominate the space. Five of the world's fastest supercomputers utilize AMD processors or the vendor's ATI graphics. In total, however, 402 of the world's top 500 systems utilize Intel processors. IBM Power processors are the second most common chips among the top systems, appearing in 52 of the top 500 supercomputers, followed by AMD's Opteron family, which resides in 42 systems. AMD, flush with victory over arch-rival Intel following last week's settlement of antitrust-related legal action, said Monday that the top three supercomputers in the world run on the company's Opteron processors, pointing to the semiannual list published by the TOP500 Project. They include the world's fastest supercomputer, a Cray XT5 system known as "Jaguar" in use at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was recently upgraded to six-core processors from the computer's previous quad-core architecture. Jaguar knocked the previous No. 1 supercomputer, "Roadrunner" from the top spot on the list. Now the No. 2 computer on the list, the Department of Energy's "Roadrunner" features an IBM chip as its primary processor and also utilizes AMD Opteron technology. No. 3 on the list, a Cray XT5 system named "Kraken" that's in use at the University of Tennessee's National Institute for Computational Sciences, also uses AMD Opteron processors, said John Furehe, director of product marketing at AMD's Servers and Workstations division. Altogether, Furehe said, AMD technology was a part of five of the top 10, 10 of the top 20 and 42 of the top 500 supercomputers, according to the TOP500 Organization.

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