[Discuss] Supercomputers: they all run Linux now

[Bill Ricker]

On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 9:02 PM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey
<mark at buttery.org> wrote:
> In the latest list of the top 500 supercomputers, ALL of them run Linux.
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-totally-dominates-supercomputers/

Well, all run Linux as OS Family.

Detailed OS data include such values as
- Linux
- Cray Linux Environment
- CentOS
- TOSS
- bullx SCS
- Sunway RaiseOS 2.0
- Kylin Linux
  ...

looks like quite a few vendor specials based upon Linux


Even better, if you go to the slice-able list,
https://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/

count 10 of 500 (rating #49-#327) list as Vendor="Penguin Computing"

June 2017 only had 2 Unix systems in Top500 -- a twin pair of IBM Flex
p460 at China Meteorological Adim, 17k9 cores each, which were at at
#494 & #495 of 500, so unless they had grown, there were expected to
fall off the next list.
And indeed #500 in Nov.2017 is 548TFlops (a +10% increase over the
last Unix on June list which was 508.9TFlops, so yeah, the best
non-Linux in the world is off the list now.
  (June also had a Linux IBM Power 775 on same Power7 architecture but
62k9 cores at #76 which dropped to #83 w/o enhancements by Nov 2017,
last Power7; and one Power8+; rest of IBM are BQC BlueGene/Q and some
Xeon iDataPlex)


(SuperMicro has only one listed, #453. I guess they're still relevant
for corp Big Data, but not for biggest data?)

Trends for Architecture, Vendor, OS, ... over time can be plotted at
https://www.top500.org/statistics/overtime/
(Alas don't click treemaps unless you want to activate Flash )

Performance development since 1994 has been roughly continued
exponential growth.
https://www.top500.org/statistics/perfdevel/
#500 running pretty much 1% of #1 over two decades also, but #1 perf
has been less smooth than #500 or total performance.
Slight drop-off in total and #500 growth since 2013 but #1 still growing strong.

The current #500 is cranking more TFlops than TOTAL for all #1..500
listed in 11/2003 _combined_, and more than the #1 in 11/2007.

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux