AMD Powers 24 of the Top 100 Supercomputers

Today, June 18, 2012, is the day when the Top500 list is updated, so, naturally, every company with a stake in that segment will have its say. Thus, it comes as no surprise that AMD issued an announcement.

This once, the company doesn't have anything massive to gush over, unlike in 2009, when the Jaguar, built by Cray, soared to the top. That very Jaguar now holds the sixth spot, which isn't really bad for a worldwide ranking, especially considering how old it is compared to the ones above it. Fifth place Tianhe-1A, from the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, entered use in 2010, while Sequoia (number 1) and K (number 2) both got launched in 2011. As for Mira (third spot) and SuperMUC (4th), they began work this very year. That said, if Intel's new partnership with Cray doesn't lead to the latter abandoning Opteron chips, AMD might power another high-end supercomputer by the end of this or the following year.

That's neither here nor there though. Today, AMD stepped up to say what its contribution to the Top500 list was, or should we say Top 100. Long story short, 24 of the best 100 utilize AMD processing cores. "AMD is fully committed to extending its offerings for the HPC market and ensuring that leading solution providers will continue to turn to AMD for a superior supercomputing experience," said Margaret Lewis, director, Server Software Planning, AMD. "Our latest engagements with industry-leading applications, developer tools, and high performance interconnect technology demonstrate the capabilities of AMD's innovative architecture. As well, our commitment to drive the industry shift to heterogeneous computing puts AMD in a prime position to strengthen our HPC leadership position well into the future." We're curious to see what approach Advanced Micro Devices will take now that the supercomputing industry is nearing petabyte and exascale levels.

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