23 June 2005
Intel Now Inside Two-Thirds Of The World’s Fastest Supercomputers Listed On The Top500
Intel® Xeon™ Processors Most Prevalent on the TOP500; Itanium® 2 Processors Second
From increasing the accuracy of global weather forecasts to helping to improve the safety of manned space flight, the
majority of scientists and engineers depend on Intel-based supercomputers more than any other computing system,
according to the latest TOP500 list.
Issued today, the 25th Edition of the TOP500 list of supercomputers shows that 333 of the world’s top 500 systems on the
list have Intel processors inside. Five years ago only four systems on the list were Intel-based. Since that time, the
number of Intel-based systems has increased steadily, to achieve the distinction as the most prevalent supercomputer
architecture on the TOP500.
In fact, according to the just-released ranking, three Intel-based platforms ranked first, second and third in terms of
the most popular supercomputing platform: Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon processors with 64-bit extensions power
254 systems, more than any other single processor, followed by Intel Itanium 2 processors, which power 79 systems.
More than half of the TOP500 systems are driven by Intel Xeon processors, making them seven times more prevalent on the
list than the next closest x86 architecture-based systems. After launching only one year ago, 64-bit Intel Xeon
processors are already used in 77 of the TOP500 computing systems.
“We’re excited to see the broad scientific advancements being made across the hundreds of supercomputers now available
to researchers on Intel standards-based server platforms,” said Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel Corporation’s
Server Platforms Group. “Putting this kind of awesome computing power in the reach of universities, governments and
businesses affordably and very quickly was a dream only a few years ago. Now, with every one of the TOP500 systems
surpassing 1 trillion calculations per second in performance, I’d say it’s becoming a reality.”
The high-performance computing (HPC) community pushes the limits of engineering and scientific discovery, but computing
technologies pioneered in HPC aren’t just important to research labs. They can ultimately benefit people’s everyday
lives. Electromagnetic field simulation, computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis are examples of
technologies once considered the sole domain of supercomputers, but today they’re used commonly by companies to design
and produce products from potato chips to cell phones and automobiles.
As an example of how Intel supercomputing technology is used, NASA’s Columbia supercomputer, based on Intel Itanium 2
processors and built by Silicon Graphics, remains among the top 10 systems on the TOP500 list. Columbia continues to be
a key tool in NASA’s programme to return space shuttles and astronauts to flight.
The semi-annual TOP500 list of supercomputers is the work of Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Erich Strohmaier
and Horst Simon of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre, and Jack
Dongarra of the University of Tennessee. The complete report is available at www.top500.org.
Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications
products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
Intel, Itanium and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
ENDS