IBM has regained dominance on a list of the 500 fastest supercomputers and has also landed two unusual prototypes in the top 10.
IBM calls the prototype systems evidence that its years-long research effort is bearing fruit. But HP, which in 2003 had the most sales in the broader high-performance technical computing market, counters that it had the same number of new systems on the list--108--as IBM. The list, released twice a year at supercomputing conferences, is based on a mathematical speed test called Linpack. The top system--NEC"s long-dominant, 5,120-processor Earth Simulator--can perform 35.8 trillions of calculations per second, or 35.8 teraflops.