The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its performance of 35.86 Tflop/s ('teraflops' or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC and installed last year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan.

The number two position is again held by the ASCI Q system at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. ASCI Q was built by Hewlett-Packard and is based on the AlphaServer SC computer system. With 13.88 Tflop/s, it was the second system ever to exceed the 10 Tflop/s mark.

The third system ever to exceed the 10 TFflop/s mark is Virginia Tech's X measured at 10.28 TFlop/s. This cluster is built with the Apple G5 as building blocks. It uses a Mellanox network based on the new Infinband technology as interconnect.

The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown impressively to seven systems. These systems are built with workstations or PCs as building blocks and often connected by special high-speed internal networks. The number of clusters in the full TOP500 grew also again strongly, now totaling 208 systems up from 149 six months ago. This makes clustered systems the most common computer architecture seen in the TOP500.

Nine of the TOP10 systems, 50 percent of all 500 systems, and 57 percent of the total performance are installed in the United States. Also, 90 percent of all 500 systems are produced in the United States. These market shares demonstrate the continued and clear leadership of the U.S. in both the production and use of high performance computing. >from *22nd Edition of TOP500 List of World's Fastest Supercomputers Released*. November 16, 2003

related context
> earth simulator.
> asci q (advanced simulation and computing program)
> Virginia Tech's X officially makes the number 3 spot. november 16, 2003
> world's fastest supercomputers: 2002 top500 list released.

imago
> earth simulator habitat composition