The world’s most powerful supercomputer uses ARM processor
For many years, x86 processors and Linux have dominated supercomputing. Until now, top500 said that on June 22, Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer powered by Fujitsu’s 48-core A64FX SoC and running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) became the first ARM-powered, the fastest computer in the world. This is the first time that a supercomputer powered by ARM has won the first place in the TOP500 supercomputer competition.
The results show that Fugaku’s High-Performance Linpack (HPL) results reached 415.5 petaflops, which is 2.8 times higher than the 148.8 petaflops of the current second-place IBM Summit system. Ranked third is Sierra, whose HPL benchmark value is 94.6 petaflops.
Aggregate list performance is now 2.23 exaflops, up from 1.65 exaflops six months ago. The main reason for the increase is the result of the new top-ranked Fugaku supercomputer. The new entry point on the list is 1.24 petaflops, which is a slight increase from the previous list. Overall the number of new systems in the list is only 51, a record low since the beginning of the TOP500 in 1993.
x86 is still the main processor architecture, with 481 out of 500 supercomputing systems using x86. “Intel claims 469 of these, with AMD installed in 11 and Hygon in the remaining one. Arm processors are present in just four TOP500 systems, three of which employ the new Fujitsu A64FX processor, with the remaining one powered by Marvell’s ThunderX2 processor.”
In addition, since 2017, global supercomputers running TOP500 have been running Linux. It can be said that in terms of high performance, it is still a world belonging to Linux.
