Cray, long synonymous with supercomputers, is on comeback trial. In terms of pure, performance, Cray systems now claim 24.9 percent share of installed total performance. That's up from 24 percent. While IBM has far fewer systems, the ones that it has left took second place with a 14.9 percent share. HPE, even though it easily has the most Top500 supercomputers, has 12.9 percent of the overall performance power. This places HPE in third place.
supercomputer performance is slowing down. The last place system's performance had grown by only 55 percent. That sounds impressive, but it pales compared to 1994 to 2008's annual 90 percent growth rate.
Technically, supercomputers are increasingly using accelerator/co-processor technology to boost performance. 104 systems on the Top500, up from 90 in July 2015. are now relying on this floating point technology. 66 of these use NVIDIA chips, three use ATI Radeon, and 27 systems work with Intel's Xeon Phi processors. Four systems use a combination of Nvidia and Intel Xeon Phi accelerators/co-processors.
What to make of all this? Well, there's no question about it. Linux rules supercomputing. But, that's old news. What's interesting, and disturbing, if you're interested in the U. S remaining a high-technology "leader" is that we're declining. And, with IBM now moving out of supercomputers, it appears that fall from supercomputing power will only continue. Within two years it seems all too likely that China will be the top supercomputing country.