The document summarizes key details from the TOP500 project over its 25 year history including: - The origins of the TOP500 as an outgrowth of efforts in the 1980s to track supercomputer installations. - How the TOP500 list defines and measures supercomputers based on the Linpack benchmark performance. - Trends over time in the top supercomputer systems and sites/countries based on a normalized performance metric accumulated over 50 editions of the TOP500 list.

1. TOP500
- 25 Years
- 50 Editions
SC17
November 14
2017
Erich
Strohmaier
Berkeley Lab

2. Mannheimer Supercomputer Statistics
• Hans Meuer started the Mannheimer Supercomputer Seminar
(precursor to ISC) in 1986
• He presented installation counts of Supercomputers (Vector-
computers) to quantify the market size for this type of system
• Counting Vector-computer sales from only a few vendors of large
systems was sufficient (Cray/CDC/Fujitsu/Hitachi/NEC)
• Worked reasonable well in the 1980s
TOP500 Roots – Early Surveys

3. Mannheim Supercomputer Statistics
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992
NEC
Hitachi
Fujitsu
CDC
Cray

4. • A lot of new vendors introduced new systems at various sizes –
and wanted to be counted
• Entry level models were questionable to be counted
• Supercomputing market was no longer vertically separated from the
‘rest’ of the computing market
• Endless discussions what was a ‘true’ supercomputer
• A new definition for ‘Supercomputer’ was needed
• Preferable a definition which adapted itself over time
• No static threshold
• And one which separated actual functional systems from concepts
• 2 Years of exploring different concepts
TOP500 Roots – End of 1980s

5. Mannheim Supercomputer Statistics
(Large) Vector Systems Installed
187
235
300
404 413
447
530
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
1986-1992: 19% annual market growth

6. Take the largest 500 installed!
• Use Linpack as measure
• Simplistic, but widely available and
• You needed a functioning system to run it!
• Self-adapting over time
• And we knew, we had 500!
TOP500 Roots – End of 1980s

7. • After first list we settled on publishing twice a year
• ISC’xy in June in Germany • SCxy in November in the U.S.
• At the second list we realized that trends over time was
the most interesting aspect of our data collection
• TOP500 is inventory based
• Works well if turn-over is high
• All information available from the TOP500 web site at:
www.top500.org
TOP500

8. Performance Development
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
59.7 GFlop/s
422 MFlop/s
1.17 TFlop/s
93 PFlop/s
549 TFlop/s
845 PFlop/s
SUM
N=1
N=500
1 Gflop/s
1 Tflop/s
100 Mflop/s
100 Gflop/s
100 Tflop/s
10 Gflop/s
10 Tflop/s
1 Pflop/s
100 Pflop/s
10 Pflop/s
1 Eflop/s
Hear more about this and the latest data at our BoF following at 5:15pm.

9. How do we integrate/aggregate over time/editions?
• System counts are focused on the low end
• Moore’s Law overpowers everything performance based
• Normalize each list by average performance
• HPL not Peak
• Average performance not max (#1) or min
• Add up contributions from various lists over time
• Each full lists contributed a total of 500
• 50 lists together have a total weight of 25,000
25 Years – 50 Editions

10. 1.0E-02
1.0E-01
1.0E+00
1.0E+01
1.0E+02
1.0E+03
1.0E+04
1.0E+05
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Sunway TaihuLight
Tianhe-2
Titan
Sequoia
K computer
Tianhe-1A
Jaguar
Roadrunner
BlueGene/L
Earth-Simulator
ASCI White
ASCI Red
CP-PACS/2048
SR2201/1024
XP/S140
Numerical Wind Tunnel
CM-5/1024
No. 1’s – HPL R_max
1 Tflop/s
100 Gflop/s
100 Tflop/s
10 Gflop/s
10 Tflop/s
1 Pflop/s
100 Pflop/s
10 Pflop/s

11. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Sunway TaihuLight
Tianhe-2
Titan
Sequoia
K computer
Tianhe-1A
Jaguar
Roadrunner
BlueGene/L
Earth-Simulator
ASCI White
ASCI Red
CP-PACS/2048
SR2201/1024
XP/S140
Numerical Wind Tunnel
CM-5/1024
HPL compared to Average System = Norm-HPL

12. 0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Sunway TaihuLight
Tianhe-2
Titan
Sequoia
K computer
Tianhe-1A
Jaguar
Roadrunner
BlueGene/L
Earth-Simulator
ASCI White
ASCI Red
CP-PACS/2048
SR2201/1024
XP/S140
Numerical Wind Tunnel
CM-5/1024
# 1’s – Accumulated Norm-HPL

13. # Site Country Norm-HPL
1 LLNL USA 1,466
2 LANL USA 810
3 ORNL USA 737
4 SNL USA 652
5 NSCC Guangzhou China 449
6 RIKEN AICS Japan 354
7 NASA/Ames USA 352
8 FZ Jülich Germany 333
9 JAMSTEC Japan 325
10 NERSC USA 303
11 ANL USA 298
Dominant Sites

14. # Site Country Norm-HPL
1 LLNL USA 1,466
2 LANL USA 810
3 ORNL USA 737
4 SNL USA 652
5 NSCC Guangzhou China 449
6 RIKEN AICS Japan 354
7 NASA/Ames USA 352
8 FZ Jülich Germany 333
9 JAMSTEC Japan 325
10 NERSC USA 303
11 ANL USA 298
Dominant Sites

15. # Site Country Σ Norm-HPL
1 LLNL USA 1,466
2 LANL USA 810
3 ORNL USA 737
4 SNL USA 652
5 NSCC Guangzhou China 449
6 RIKEN AICS Japan 354
7 NASA/Ames USA 352
8 FZ Jülich Germany 333
9 JAMSTEC Japan 325
10 NERSC USA 303
11 ANL USA 298
Dominant Sites

16. # Site Country Norm-HPL
1 LLNL USA 1,466
2 LANL USA 810
3 ORNL USA 737
4 SNL USA 652
5 NSCC Guangzhou China 449
6 RIKEN AICS Japan 354
7 NASA/Ames USA 352
8 FZ Jülich Germany 333
9 JAMSTEC Japan 325
10 NERSC USA 303
11 ANL USA 298
Dominant Sites

17. 0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
1,400
1,600
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
LLNL
LANL
ORNL
SNL
Sites – Accumulated Norm-HPL

18. Countries
# Country Norm-HPL
1 United States 13,258
2 Japan 3,377
3 China 1,740
4 Germany 1,686
5 United Kingdom 1,253
6 France 866
7 Switzerland 287
8 Canada 265
9 Italy 263
10 South Korea 224

19. 0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
United States
Japan
China
Germany
United Kingdom
France
Countries – Norm-HPL

20. System Design
# Country Norm-HPL
1 MPP non-intel 11,962
2 MPP intel based 7,618
3 Vector 3,103
4 NVIDIA GPU 1147
5 Intel Xeon Phi 792
6 Other Accelerator 274
7 SIMD 103

21. 0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
MPP non-intel
MPP intel
Vector
Accelerator
NVIDIA
Intel Phi
System Designs – Norm-HPL