10 Fastest Supercomputers Across the Planet

1 IBM Sequoia – United States:

The mightiest, fastest supercomputer till date, the IBM Sequoia is a petascale machine that is built under the base of IBM’s Blue Gene/Q architecture. The IBM Sequoia recently overthrew- last month to be exact, Fujitsu’s K supercomputer to take the lone position as the fastest supercomputer in the planet. With over 1,572,864 processing cores, the IBM Sequoia is also considered as the most efficient supercomputer till date; that is 2069 megaflops per watt. Initially IBM created this monster for the National Nuclear Security Administration, but later it was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011 and was fully initiated in June 2012. Till now the supercomputer provides solutions for complex and advanced simulations of processing and problems, along with designing and modeling of weapon effects at the laboratory. The IBM Sequoia uses a LINPACK performance, which helped it to clock over an astonishing 16.32 petaflops. The IBM Sequoia also runs on Linux based operating system, with 98,000 nodes running on Compute Node Linux and over 768 I/O nodes running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

2 Fujitsu K Computer – Japan:

The recently dethroned Fujitsu K is a Japanese supercomputer produced by tech giant, Fujitsu and was recognized as the fastest supercomputer in the world till June 2012. Fujitsu’s K is also the first super computer to reach a computing speed of over 8 petaflops and recently to top 10 petaflops. This giant runs on 705,024 cores, with over 1,410,048 GB of memory. The Fujitsu K is currently installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus, which is at Kobe, Japan. It is also one of the least efficient supercomputers across the globe, at 830 megaflops per watt. The Fujitsu K works on Linux based operating system

3 IBM Mira – United States:

Another IBM made supercomputer; the IBM Mira is also structured with Blue Gene/Q architecture as its core technology. Considered to be the most efficient supercomputer, the IBM Mira process pure power at 8.16 petaflops and has an energy efficiency of 2069 megaflops per watt. With a massive processing power from 786,432 cores, the Mira uses Linux as its operating system. This mighty supercomputer is situated at the Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, which also is considered to be the first science and engineering national lab in the United States.

4 SuperMUC – Germany:

Best known for having a perfect architecture, the SuperMUC is the second German made supercomputer to make this list. This 146,456 core giant is one among a handful of supercomputers that is built over a water cooled technology. The SuperMUC is located at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum or simply the Leibniz Supercomputing centre, in Garching near Munich. Similar to Fermi, the SuperMUC is used for several academic purposes by several universities throughout Munich.  Also manufactured by IBM, the SuperMUC computes at 2.9 petaflops, with Infiniband FDR providing the interconnection. Considered to be efficient than Tianhe-1a, the SuperMUC uses over 3422.67 kW of power and works on Linux based operating system

5 Tianhe-1a – China:

The fastest supercomputer in China, the Tianhe-1a is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. Another petascale computer, the Tianhe-1a is also the second supercomputer from China to make this list. Once known to be the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-1a muscles over 2.57 petaflops, with 186,368 processing cores. The NSC uses this supercomputer for researches and experiments in aircraft designing and oil utilization. With over 229,376 GB of memory, the Tianhe-1a is also least energy efficient supercomputer, as it provides 635 megaflops per watt. Tianhe-1a works on Linux operating system.

6 Cray Jaguar – United States:

A petascale supercomputer, the Cray Jaguar is built by Cray at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. This mammoth supercomputer is used by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to work on their ample array of scientific experiments, problems and projects. The massively parallel, Cray Jaguar operates at 298,592 cores producing 377 megaflops per watt. The Cray Jaguar is interconnected by Cray Gemini Interconnect and operates on Cray Linux Environment

7 Fermi – Italy:

One of the fastest supercomputers in Europe, the Fermi is used by a group of Italian universities and is the secondsupercomputer based on IBM’s Blue Gene/Q architecture to make this list. According to reports, this supercomputer is mainly used in various academic researches and projects involving all the Italian universities. Similar to all Blue Gene/Q supercomputers, the Fermi is also highly efficient, as it can provide 1.73 petaflops of performance through 163,840 processor cores. The Fermi works on Linux operating system.

8 JuQueen – Germany:

German made JuQueen, is the successor to an earlier design-JUBL and one of four machines, based on IBM’s Blue Gene/Q architecture to make this list. The JuQueen is built by IBM, with Blue Gene/P as the core. Owned by Forschungszentrum Julich, the JuQueen comes up with an impressive 1.38 petaflops and is also considered as a highly efficient supercomputer at 2069 megaflops per watt. The computeroperates on Linux with 131072 cores for processing.

9 Curie Thin Nodes – France:

One among four European entries, France’s supercomputer Curie Thin Nodes takes the number 9^th spot in our list of top 10 supercomputers. Although with an impressive speed of 603 megaflops per watt, the Curie Thin Node is considered as one of the least efficient supercomputers across the globe. This supercomputer operates with 308,736 GB of memory, powered around 2251.00 KW. The machine is interconnected by Infiniband QDR and uses bullx SuperComputer Suite A.E.2.1 as theoperating system. But the Curie Thin Nodes is also considered as the only machine in this list that utilizes the smallest number of cores- 77,184 in total.

10 Dawning Nebulae – China:

Chinese supercomputer, Dawning Nebulae is the tenth fastest supercomputer in the world. It is also the second most powerfulcomputer in China. The Dawning Nebulae is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. This monster produces computations at 1.27 petaflops using 120,640 processor cores, that is 492 megaflops per watt. The Dawning Nebulae works with Intel Xeon X5650 processors and Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPUs, as its been built from a Dawning TC3600 Blade system.