America’s Supercomputer Might Continues Shrinking

While the US continues to have the biggest presence on the list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, its share is shrinking. Today, America’s share is lower than it has ever been, or at least lower than it has been since the first Top500 list was created in 1993.

The latest edition of the biannual Top500, released Monday, has fewer US supercomputers than even the previous edition, which came out in July of this year. Meanwhile, China’s presence on the list continues to grow by leaps and bounds. There are three times more Chinese systems on the list today than there were in July.

China also continues to command the top spot on the list. The Tianhe-2 supercomputer, also known as Milky Way-2, built by China’s National University of Defense Technology, has been designated as the world’s most powerful supercomputer for the sixth consecutive time.

Europe’s share of the list is declining as well, while Asia overall commands a growing percentage of the pool of the mightiest supercomputers.

Top500 is compiled by scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Prometeus, a German company that organizes the annual International Supercomputing Conference.

The rate of performance growth in supercomputing overall has slowed down. There has been little change at the top of the list in recent years, while performance at the bottom has been increasing but not as quickly as it used to.

Here are the highlights in numbers:

US and China

Country share of HPC systems on the November 2015 Top500 list (Chart courtesy of Top500)

Europe’s Presence Also Shrinks

The Slowing HPC Performance Growth

Co-Processors on the Rise