I was greatly surprised by today's news that that Japan's K Supercomputer (the K coming from the chinese character 京 which means 10^16) is the new No 1 machine in the June 2011 Top500 list. I was under the impression that this machine was scheduled to start operating in 2012. But maybe more surprising than this early appearance are two factors: First, its impressive Peak Performance at 8.77 PetaFlops and second, its Linpack rating of 8.16 PF, which translates to a 93% Linpack efficiency! Being used to much lower rates this efficiency is extremely impressive: around 75% efficiency for CPUs and about 50% for GPUs. The 8.16PF rating means that K is more powerful than the next 5 Top500 systems combined.
Interesting is also to remember that this machine was about to be scratched last year by the Japanese government, a move that was only reversed after the Japanese scientific community angrily opposed it.
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