Aurora enters TOP500 supercomputer ranking at No. 2 with a challenge for reigning champ Frontier

Supercomputer Fugaku remains on the top 10 list but has fallen to the fourth spot for this edition. Fugaku had placed second earlier this year and held the number one position from June 2020 until November 2021. With an HPL score of 442.01 PFLOPS and located in Kobe, Japan, Fugaku continues to hold the title as the highest ranked systems outside of the U.S.

The LUMI system, previously in the top three, now holds the number five spot with an HPL score of 379.70 PFLOPS. This system is the largest in Europe and has seen multiple upgrades, keeping it near the top of the list. For this edition, LUMI improved from an HPL score of 309.10 PFLOPS since the last list.

This edition of the TOP500 also highlights a few trends. For instance, based on this top 10 list, Intel, AMD, and IBM processors seem to be the preferred choice for HPC systems.

“Out of the TOP10, five systems use Intel Xeon processors (Aurora, Eagle, Leonardo, MareNostrum 5 ACC, and EOS NVIDIA DGX SuperPod), two systems use AMD processors (Frontier and LUMI), and two systems use IBM processors (Summit and Sierra),” a press statement reads.

The list also shows that China and the U.S. earned the most entries on the entire list. The U.S. increased its lead from 150 machines on the previous list to 161 in November, and China dropped from 134 previously to 104 on the current list. On a larger scale, North America improved from 160 machines to 171 on the current tally, Asia decreased from 192 to 169 machines, and Europe grew from 133 to 143 systems.

Systems absent from this list since the previous edition include Sunway TaihuLight, Perlmutter, Selene, and Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A).