498 Out Of The 500 Fastest Supercomputers In The World Are Running Linux

Short Bytes: Top500 has released its latest list of the world’s faster supercomputers. Linux has once again emerged as a winner, establishing its authority on 498 out of the top 500 machines. The remaining 2 are running IBM AIX, a Unix variant. Both China and the US claim 171 machines each in the latest list.

The Top500 has revealed the latest list of the fastest supercomputers on the planet. The supercomputers running on Linux have once again dominated the list. If you’ve read our list of some of the most interesting facts about Linux, this news shouldn’t surprise you.

Earlier this year, we told you about TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer, that beat its own Tianhe-2. In the latest list, China has managed to maintain its supremacy with Sunway TaihuLight, at 93 petaflops, and Tianhe-2, at 34 petaflops. For those who don’t know, petaflop is 1,000 teraflops or 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

Out of the top 500 systems, 498 machines are running Linux. The remaining two are running IBM AIX, a Unix variant. Since the arrival of Linux on this list in 1998, it was consistently grown and dominated the world’s fastest supercomputers.

China and United States both claim 171 supercomputers on the list, accounting for the two-thirds of all. Germany claims the third spot with 31 systems, followed by Japan with 27, France with 20, the UK with 13. Taking the Linpack performance into the account, the US, with 33.9 percent of the total, beats China with 33.3 percent.

If we take a look at the last year, the US was a clear winner with 200 supercomputers, followed by China with 108, Japan with 37, and both the UK and France with 18. The combined performance of all supercomputers on the list is now 672 petaflops, which is 60% greater than last year’s performance.

Also, machines faster than 1 petaflops occupy the first 117 places. Last year, this number was limited to 81.

What do you think about the dominance of Linux in supercomputing world? Can Linux conquer all 500 systems in 2017? Don’t forget to share your views in the comments section below.