TOP500 – The champions maintain their positions

The latest – the 58th – edition of the TOP500 list, which ranks supercomputers, has been released but shows no major changes among the front-runners. Fugaku (RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe), which debuted in June 2020, has kept its top ranking with its 442- petaflops performance; the second and third-ranking supercomputers were Summit (148.8 petaflops, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA) and Sierra (94.6 petaflops, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, USA), respectively.

Expectations and reality

In spite of the fact that everyone had predicted reaching the exascale range by 2021, this did not happen, and Aurora, which is being built for Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago, USA), also remained a promise only. It can be reasonably assumed that developments were slowed down by the worldwide semiconductor shortage and the manufacturing and logistics difficulties, although supercomputers also play an important role in the fight against the underlying coronavirus pandemic. Although bombastic announcements from China reported performances exceeding one exaflop, HPL measurement results did not reach the editors of TOP500.org. One can only guess the reasons for this – for example, they might wish to wait until the US announces one of its exascale machines and then to raise the bids immediately. Another similar example is heralding grandiose-level performances by only calculating with 16 bits although TOP500.org measures 64-bit petaflops. In any case, the Chinese have a right to be proud because the fifth place went to Sunway TaihuLight (93 petaflops, National Supercomputing Center, Wuxi, China), and what is more, they are at the top of the list of countries with the highest number of TOP500 supercomputers.

Changes and novelties

The fact that only one new player emerged in the first ten years – Voyager-EUS2, installed by Microsoft Azure, could only make it to No. 10 with its 30 petaflops of performance – doesn’t mean that the past 6 months were free from big and progressive changes. Perlmutter is keeping its No.5 position but its performance increased to 70.9 petaflops. Spots No. 11 and 12 were taken by two new players, SSC 21 (25.2 petaflops, South Korea) and Polaris (23.8 petaflops, USA); and four new Russian systems appeared on the list at the same time at spots No. 19, 36, 40, and 43; therefore, development is uninterrupted. This is also corroborated by the fact that the minimum performance required for inclusion in the list grew to 1.65 petaflops from the 1.51-petaflops limit of six months before. Today, one needs to have at least 4.85 petaflops to be among the top100 as compared to the 4.13 petaflops of the previous update. It is also worth noting that the last supercomputer on the TOP500 list (NA1, 1.65 petaflops, the Netherlands) was No.433 six months ago.

Climate-aware competitors

With environmental considerations becoming more prominent, increasing emphasis is placed on the energy efficiency of supercomputers. Such huge performance has an energy demand equivalent to that of several thousand households, and reducing their consumption – the greening of supercomputing – has therefore become an expectation. This gave birth to the GREEN500 list, in which Preferred Networks MN-3 from Japan was No.1 for the third time; now it has a performance of 39.98 gigaflops/watt, which was only 29.7 39.98 gigaflops/watt six months ago (it jumped from spot No.337 to spot No.302 of the TOP500 list). The 2nd-placer SSC- 21 from South Korea reached 33.98 gigaflops/watt (No.291 of TOP500), and the 3rd-placer Thetys from the US reached 31.5 gigaflops/watt (No.295 of TOP500). The 4th-placer Wilkes-3 from England is also worth noting because while having an energy-efficiency of 30.8 gigaflops/watt, it fell behind from spot No.100 to spot No.281, which hints at an expressly dynamic evolution.

European achievements

Almost two-thirds of the supercomputers on the TOP500 list are from China (173 systems now vs. 186 before) or the US (150 machines now vs. 123 before), and the performance of the supercomputers of the continent should therefore be evaluated in view of this. The 8th-placer JUWELS Booster Module from Germany made it to the top10 with a performance of 44.1 petaflops, and the following Italian machine, which is plainly and simply called HPC5, has a performance of 35.5 petaflops. European candidates were even more successful on the GREEN500 list: the above-mentioned Wilkes-3 from England got spot No.4, the Dutch Snellius Phase 1 was ranked No.6 (spot No.403 on TOP500), the Czech Karolina is at position No.8 (spot No. 71 on TOP500), and the 9th place is also owned by a European machine, MeluXina in Luxembourg (spot No.45 on TOP500). The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking plays a vital role in the developments taking place in the old continent; after Vega in Slovenia, MeluXina in Luxembourg, and Karolina in the Czech Republic, the Bulgarian Discoverer has become another success story by debuting at spot No.91 with a performance of 4.5 petaflops.

Renewal in Hungary

It was almost two decades ago when the first Hungarian supercomputer was put into operation, so the question of where we stand on the TOP500 list rightfully emerges. It depends on where we are in the current development cycle, which is absolutely due every 4 or 5 years. It is not by chance that the world rank list is updated twice a year – in June and November. Komondor, which is scheduled to become operational next year, is expected to have a performance of 5 petaflops, which is equivalent to ten times the current capacities. Considering current and expected achievements, Hungary is expected to finish at around spot No.300 in the updated world rank list next summer, which is an impressive achievement in view of the playing field.