10. Shaheen II
Located in the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, the Shaheen II (not to be confused with the land-based supersonic surface-to-surface medium-range guided ballistic missile) relies on an architecture consisting of Cray XC40, Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2.3GHz, and Aries interconnect.
Like several others on the list, which was compiled by Top500, it was built by Cray Inc., an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It features 196,608 cores, has an Rmax of 5,537.0 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 7,235.2 TFlop/s and uses 2,834 kW of power.
9. Hazel Hen
Located in the HLRS – Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum (High Performance Computing Center) in Stuttgart, Germany, the Hazel Hen is built on Cray XC40, Xeon E5-2680v3 12C 2.5GHz, and Aries interconnect (similar to the Shaheen II) and was also built by Cray Inc.
It features 185,088 cores, but performs better than the Shaheen II at an Rmax of 5,640.2 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 7,403.5 TFlop/s. Its power usage was not listed.
8. Piz Daint
Located in the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Switzerland and named after a mountain of the Swiss Ortler Alps, Piz Daint’s architecture consists of Cray XC30, Xeon E5-2670 8C 2.600GHz, Aries interconnect, NVIDIA K20x and is the third supercomputer on this list built by Cray Inc.
It features 115,984 cores, has an Rmax of 6,271.0 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 7,788.9 TFlop/s and uses 2,325 kW of power.
7. Trinity
The Trinity supercomputer is managed and operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Its architecture consists of Cray XC40, Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2.3GHz, Aries interconnect.
It features 301,056 cores, has an Rmax of 8,100.9 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 11,078.9 TFlop/s and has an undisclosed power usage.
6. Mira
Located in the Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont, Illinois, outside Chicago and operated for the American Department of Energy Office of Science (SC), Mira is the first supercomputer on our list not built by Cray.
Its architecture consists of BlueGene/Q, Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz, and was built by IBM. It features 786,432 cores, has an Rmax of 8,586.6 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 10,066.3 TFlop/s and uses 3,945 kW of power.
5. K computer
The K computer – named for the Japanese word “kei”(?), meaning 10 quadrillion (1016) is located at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Japan. Its architecture consists of SPARC64 VIIIfx 2.0GHz, Tofu interconnect and was built by Fujitsu.
It features 705,024 cores, has an Rmax of 10,510.0 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 11,280.4 TFlop/s and uses 12,660 kW of power.
4. Sequoia
Located in the Livermore California and once again operated for the U.S. DOE NNSA, the Sequoia is the second supercomputer on the list built by IBM. Its architecture consists of BlueGene/Q, and Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz. It features 1,572,864 cores, has an Rmax of 17,173.2 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 20,132.7 TFlop/s and uses 7,890 kW of power.
3. Titan
Located in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, it is the second supercomputer operated for the American DOE SC, and the most powerful supercomputer built by Cray Inc. Its architecture consists of Cray XK7, Opteron 6274 16C 2.200GHz, Cray Gemini interconnect and NVIDIA K20x.
It features 560,640 cores, has an Rmax of 17,590.0 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 27,112.5 TFlop/s and uses 8,209 kW of power.
2. Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2)
Located in the National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou, China, this was the world’s former reigning champion. Its architecture consists of TH-IVB-FEP Cluster, Intel Xeon E5-2692 12C 2.200GHz, TH Express-2, Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P and was built by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology.
It features 3,120,000 cores, has a Rmax of 33,862.7 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 54,902.4 TFlop/s and uses 17,808 kW of power.
1. Sunway TaihuLight
Located in the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China, this is the new world leader in supercomputing as of June 2016. Its architecture is remarkable in that it was built entirely using processors designed and made in China, while the Tianhe-2 was Intel-based. It consists of Sunway MPP and Sunway SW26010 260C 1.45GHz and was built by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC).
It features 10,649,600 cores, has an Rmax of 93,014.6 TFlop/s, Rpeak of 125,435.9 TFlop/s and uses only 15,371 kW of power. In other words, it is twice as fast and three times as efficient as the previous record holder.