Long Live the Top 500
Those who say that the “Top 500” (http://www.top500.org/) is nothing more than “a high-tech pissing contest” are wrong. As the history of the Top 500 has shown, “The List” has an unfailing ability to predict the future of and inexorably impact plebeian, everyday computing.
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
Those who say that the “Top 500” list (
http://www.top500.org/) is nothing more than “a high-tech pissing contest” are wrong. The naysayers are skeptics in a skeptical age who believe that the Top 500 is only a marketing tool, a list to maintain bragging rights, and a measurement of
mano-a-mano raw processing power without a foundation in practical computing. In fact, as the history of the Top 500 has shown, “The List” has an unfailing ability to predict the future of and inexorably impact plebeian, everyday computing.
The History of “The List”
The Top 500 list tracks the 500 most powerful computers in the world, as reported to the Top 500 project. The List, which debuted in 1993, was originally developed to help scientists involved in high-performance computing (HPC) understand long term trends in computing. Since 1993, The List has been published twice a year– usually to great fanfare– at one of the worldwide supercomputing conferences.
Of course, there’s a considerable amount of pride in making The List, in moving up in rank, and in capturing the coveted number one spot. Clearly, vendors love The List, because it validates products and strengthens claims. What vendor wouldn’t thrill in manufacturing the world’s fastest (or most rapidly evolving) computer?
