Top 5 Data Center Industry Stories, Week of June 22

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The Milky Way 2 (Tianhe-2) system from China, pictured above, is the new champion in the Top500 ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers.

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated (June 2013) - The Top 500 list documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here’s a look at the top finishers in the latest Top 500 list, which was released Monday at the ISC13 supercomputing conference in Leipzing, Germany.

China's Milky Way-2 Is World's Top Supercomputer - Milkyway-2, a new supercomputer from China has blown the lid off of the semi-annual Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Announced at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig, Germany Monday, at an astounding 33.86 petaflop/s the Chinese Milkyway-2 (also known as Tianhe-2) has almost doubled the performance of the November 2012 number one, Oak Ridge’s Titan, which falls to number two on the June 2013 list.

Microsoft Plans Major Expansion of Iowa Data Center - Microsoft plans to expand its cloud infrastructure in Iowa with a new $677.6 million data center in West Des Moines, the company and state officials announced today. The new project, known locally by the codename “Project Mountain,” builds upon Microsoft’s existing data center campus in West Des Moines.

Many Factors Boosting Data Center Demand - Almost all of the new technologies and modern solutions which are coming out find the data center as their home. We can now call it “The Data Center of Everything.” There are a lot more users coming online. These users are sharing more data and are requiring more services to be delivered to them. Data and services must stay highly available and very resilient.

Rackspace Sharpens Its Focus on Hybrid Cloud - For many cloud-watchers, Rackspace Hosting has been viewed as a rival to Amazon Web Services in the public cloud arena. But this week the company is touting the power of hybrid clouds, and showcasing a marquee brand implementing a private cloud using Rackspace’s OpenStack cloud.

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