A U.S. Sequoia Supercomputer took the first position in the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers for the first time since November 2009, TOP500 supercomputing site reported.
The Sequoia Supercomputer, installed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, achieved an impressive 16.32 petaflop/s using 1,572,864 cores.
Sequoia, one of the most energy efficient systems on the list, left behind Japan's "K Computer" with 10.51 Pflop/s, which was at the top in the last two ratings. The United States lost the lead position in November 2009 when China's Tianhe-1A occupied the first position.
Russia's Lomonosov supercomputer, installed in Moscow State University, with 0.9 Pflop/s ranked 22nd. Overall, there are five Russian supercomputers in the current rating, the same number as in the previous list.
The TOP500 table shows the 500 most powerful commercially available computer systems twice a year. Some experts often criticize the rating for the one-sidedness and inability to show the actual performance of systems in many classes of practical problems.
