This week Russian technology news source, CNews reported that the “number of HPC systems delivered by Russia’s largest supercomputer vendor, T-Platforms, has fallen down to a record low level in the local Top 50 rating.” The country’s HPC vendor is losing ground to American companies HP and IBM, which have, according to the report, strengthened their positions and together make up over 70% of the ranked systems.
The new list of the top 50 systems in Russia was released today, with T-Platforms still holding steady at the top of the charts with their systems built by Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU). This system, which operated at 510 teraflops for the last list in March now delivers up to 1.3 petaflops following a major upgrade.
As CNews reports, “The total peak performance of all systems on the list has grown to 3,275 Pflops. Lomonosov supercomputer extension, made traditionally by its supplier – T-Platforms, turned the major contributor to this growth. Apart from this supply, only one new T-Platforms installation appeared on the list – modernization of SKIF Cyberia supercomputer. It initially was built by T-Platforms in 2007 for Tomsk State University within a state HPC program.”
MSU has four systems and is considering another in the future, a source told the Russian technology news source. The extensions onto their initial clusters have allowed T-Platforms to own 45% of Russia’s top 50 systems. However, the number of HPC systems they have installed has dropped from 9 to 5—the lowest count for the company since it first appeared on the Top 50 list in 2004.
To put that further in context, in 2008, Russia had 20 systems. This year, IBM is the company with 20 systems with HP trailing just behind. This marks a rather large shift in Russia considering that in 2008, the same year that T-Platforms was the undisputed HPC leader in the country, IBM only had 10 systems on the list and HP only 6.