Roadrunner: a Linux-based petaflop computer

On June 18 the updated list of the top 500-supercomputers was published.

This time the list includes the first petaflop computer, 10 to the 15th floating point operations per second, one thousand teraflops, for a computer built by IBM for the US government.

The introduction of Roadrunner is one more example of the drive away from proprietary technologies towards use of thousands of commodity components clustered and managed by Linux.

This architecture for supercomputer solutions is strikingly similar to that used by Google, Amazon, Yahoo et al to power their services.

Note that IBM did not use its processor technology, Power. Instead, it used the combination of AMD's Opteron and the Cell technology, developed by IBM and Toshiba for Sony's PlayStation 3.

Comparing the updated list to that of June 2000, offers these points.

• Use of commodity components. Roadrunner uses the processor in Sony's Play Station 3 and AMD Opteron chips. Today 86% of the top 500 supercomputers use conventional Intel/AMD technologies with close to the remaining 14% using IBM's Power. This contrast to using close to 100% RISC-based hardware back in 2000 when there were 4 Intel-IA-32 based computers. The share of IBM's Power went from the top technology offering in 2000, with 143 computers, down to 23 in the current top-500 list.
  
• Linux. Roadrunner and 92% of the top 500-supercomputers use Linux for OS compared to Unix at 90% back in 2000. Now, Unix is represented exclusively by AIX with 23 computers or 4.60%.
  

   +------------- Top-500 Supercomputers ----------+
   +------------- Operating Systems ---------------+
   Date       OS               Count     Share %

   2008.June  Linux              460     92.00 %
              AIX                 23      4.60 %
              Mac OS               2      0.40 %
              Windows              2      0.40 %
              Other               13      2.60 %

   2000.June  Unix               453     90.60 %
              Linux               28      5.60 %
              BSD Based           17      3.40 %
              N/A                  2      0.40 %

   +------------- Processor Family ----------------+
   Date       Processor        Count     Share %

   2008.June  Intel EM64T        356     71.20 %
              AMD x86_64         107     21.40 %
              Power               68     13.60 %
              AMD x86_64          55     11.00 %
              Intel IA-64         16      3.20 %
              Intel IA-32          3      0.60 %
              Cray                 1      0.20 %
              NEC                  1      0.20 %
              Intel+AMD          430     86.00 %

   2000.June  Power              143     28.60 %
              Sparc              122     24.40 %
              MIPS                62     12.40 %
              Alpha               56     11.20 %
              PA-RISC             53     10.60 %
              NEC                 25      5.00 %
              Fujitsu             19      3.80 %
              Hitachi SR8000      10      2.00 %
              Cray                 6      1.20 %
              Intel IA-32          3      0.60 %
              Intel i860           1      0.20 %
   +-----------------------------------------------+