By Bill Lee

The 53rd edition of the TOP500 List, a ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers, was released this month. The IBTA is excited to share that InfiniBand accelerates the top three supercomputers in the world and six of the top 10 systems. Additionally, HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand, the fastest end to end interconnect technology currently available, has made its debut on the List in four systems – including the fifth highest ranking supercomputer, the Frontera at Texas Advanced Computing Center.

The June 2019 TOP500 List also highlights that InfiniBand accelerates the top two fastest industrial supercomputers, the PANGEA III system at Total Exploration Production, ranked number 11 on the List, and the HPC4 system at Eni S.p.A., ranked number 17 on the List.

In addition to InfiniBand dominating the latest TOP500 List, it also includes 170 RoCE-capable Ethernet systems, representing a majority of all Ethernet systems included in the List.

With the release of each report, the TOP500 List has continued to evolve by including both traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) and enterprise platforms, with more than half of the platforms on the list now categorized as cloud/hyperscale application platforms. InfiniBand continues to be the interconnect of choice for HPC systems, connecting 126 supercomputers, or nearly 55 percent, of the overall systems in the HPC category.

The ever-increasing, widespread use of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) in supercomputers has been well documented over the past few years via the TOP500 List. The prevalence of InfiniBand and RoCE systems will continue their upward trajectory due to the need for increased compute power and low latency for emerging data-heavy applications such as Artificial Intelligence being deployed today and in the future.

The complete TOP500 List can be found on https://www.top500.org/ and you can read the IBTA’s full announcement here.

 

InfiniBand (TM/SM) is a trademark and service mark of the InfiniBand Trade Association. Other names and brands are the property of their respective owners.