The worlds largest computers run on Linux.

[R_Head]

I wonder if the NSA runs Linux to gather info...

[viking60]

Yes ! They are using supercomputers - so they are using Linux. Sad but true. They needed something that is secure, fast and impossible to hack...

[viking60]

The worlds top 500 Supercomputers list is out again. There has been no change in the top spot. The fastest and strongest supercomputer in the world is still Chinese:

http://www.top500.org/list/2014/06/

The Tianhe-2 is still on top:

And it is operated by Kylin Linux
It has 3,120,000 (!) cores.

It is fancy to have the top spot, but it is also interesting to see how many Supercomputers the different countries have.

The USA have always had the most supercomputers but their share is dropping below 50 % from 265 to 233 systems since November last year.
The number of Chinese systems are growing from 63 to 76.
Then we have the UK and Japan with 30 systems each.
France has 27 supercomputers.
Germany has 23.

These numbers are not 100% reliable since supercomputers are often used by governmental agencies who prefer to keep things secret.
The list contains only what they care to report.

The Cray computer in the 10th spot is used by the US government - but it is not reported what it is used for.

(Tech and privacy minded people might have a pretty good idea though)

Intel is supplying processors to 85,4 % of the systems. AMD has dropped from 9 to 6 % and IBM power-processor is stable with 8 %.

It is very obvious that all the processors in the supercomputer world are delivered by American companies.
Hardware tampering on the processor level is almost impossible to discover and must create some headaches in other countries; given the US governments attitude towards "foreigners".

[R_Head]

Interesting, what number crunching you can do with that?

Sometimes I wonder what is the point on having a Supercomputer

Perhaps they are running different scenarios on Global Warming, folding proteins for Bio Weapons?

I got it, rendering the next Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks movie

[viking60]

The supercomputer list has become pretty static. Not many changes and the biggest one for the fourth time in a row is still the Chinese Tianhe-2.
Here are some pictures of the worlds no. one since 1993:

http://www.top500.org/featured/top-systems/

As you can se it is nothing for the hobby room. I believe all of the top spots (The Biggest/fastest computer in the world) since 1993 have been Linux driven.
Here is a pic of the best supercomputer in the world in 1993:


This is the CM-5 in the Los Alamos National Lab

The current leader is Tianhe-2 as of Nov 2014

Tianhe-2 was built by China's National University of Defense Technology in cooperation with the company Inspur
One interesting bit of information is that Microsoft In 2005 invested 20 million US$ in the company.
This computer is in Changsha, Hunan, for those of you who know your way arround in China...

[viking60]

The Chinese power on with the top spots on the wolrds fastest supercomputers.
They are gaining ground on the US in the High Perfomance Computing (HPC) race.

Currently the worlds fastst computer is the Sunway ThaiuLight Sunway MPP, Sunway SW26010 260C 1.45GHz, Sunway


It has s speed of 93 Petaflops which is more than double of the capasity of the no. two spot; the Tianhe with 34 Petaflops.

The OS is the Linux based; Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5
Memory is 1.31 Peta Bytes which is ...a lot (1 Peta byte = 1000 Terra bytes)

The cost was about US$273 Million.

[viking60]

It's official: All the worlds top 500 supercomputers run on Linux!

No changes on the top but movements further down have eliminated all other operative systems. This makes Linux the most dominant Operating system in the world with dominance in both the smartphone and IOT area as well as the supercomputers.

It is the OS that governments and heavy duty computer users prefer ....heavy duty as in the largest companies in the world.

https://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/

China has passed the US as the nation with the most supercomputers; for the first time.

There might be some Unix supercomputers further down the list... and forget Windows it simply is not suited for supercomputers.

[R_Head]

[viking60]

It turns out that two IBM computers - running AIX - dropped out of the list making it 100% Linux.