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June 18, 2008
AMD Opterons Power World’s Fastest Supercomputers
Three of the top five systems and seven of the top twenty systems depend use AMD technology
DRESDEN, Germany, June 18 -- At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD today announced that its AMD Opteron processors have helped deliver many of the top performing supercomputers in the world. For the first time ever, AMD technology plays a role in the number one supercomputer in the world and this same processor technology that helps drive the number one supercomputer is also readily available for business and personal computing.
"This current TOP500 list, with its first ever petascale performance, not only represents a milestone in scientific computing but also demonstrates the relevance of scalability and balanced system design in high performance computing (HPC). It also points to heterogeneous computing as an emerging and necessary step for the industry," said Randy Allen, senior vice president, computation solutions group, AMD. "AMD and its many supercomputing partners, including top tier OEMs, recognize that for heterogeneous computing to be successful, collaboration among industry leaders is critical. The performance demonstrated on this list by AMD and our partners exceeds what any single solution has ever been able to achieve and we believe this tightly coupled innovation will become more prevalent to the benefit of HPC, as well as business and personal computing customers."
Beyond helping drive the number one system to its record-breaking petascale performance, six additional multi-core AMD Opteron processor-based supercomputers ranked in the balance of the top 20, including the much-anticipated "Ranger" system from Sun Microsystems at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and several of Cray's well-known HPC installations. In total, 11 of AMD's OEM customers have achieved a TOP500 ranking based on AMD's Direct Connect Architecture in 11 countries worldwide.
The AMD Opteron processor-based "Ranger" supercomputer at TACC made its first appearance on the TOP500 list, ranking fourth with a score of 326 teraflops. "Ranger" is based on Sun Microsystems' Constellation blade system and is the most powerful supercomputing system in the world for open science research, helping solve massive computational problems from weather prediction and climate modeling to genetics and medical research.
"The Sun Constellation System at TACC delivers an open, petascale-capable architecture through cost-effective, off-the-shelf components and state-of-the-art technologies," said Bjorn Andersson, director, HPC marketing, Sun Microsystems. "Through the combination of Sun's innovative design principles for server, switch and interconnect technology and the performance and energy-efficiency of multi-core AMD Opteron processors, Ranger is helping to achieve breakthrough discoveries across domains and disciplines and is poised to grow with the demands of open science research."
AMD Opteron processor-based Cray supercomputers continue their long tradition of achieving high TOP500 rankings. Currently, 15 supercomputers based on the collaboration between Cray and AMD are delivering supercomputing customers with world-class computational power. This represents the 7th straight time that AMD Opteron processor-based Cray systems have been ranked in the top 10 on the TOP500 list and underscores the level of system design, innovation, and scalability that Cray and AMD together deliver.
"IDC forecasts that the market for high performance computing systems will continue growing rapidly and will reach $18 billion in 2012. Large-scale HPC systems enable major scientific and engineering breakthroughs and are at the forefront of issues that later affect enterprise and even desktop computing environments, such as parallel processing and power consumption," said Steve Conway, IDC research vice president, HPC. "The AMD Opteron processor and AMD's Direct Connect Architecture continue to play an important part in moving HPC capabilities forward across the globe."
The Top 500 list and related documentation is scheduled to be released publicly on June 18, 2008, and will be accessible online at www.top500.org.
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.
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Source: AMD
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