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AMD and IBM Are the Leaders in the Supercomputers Dedicated Market Segment

Europe and the U.S. were defeated by Japan and China

Jul 1, 2006 13:02 GMT  ·  By
  

This week seems to be monopolized by the supercomputers world and by the dedicated event - the International Supercomputer Conference in Dresden, Germany. The research updated twice a year revealed that China and Japan are the leaders in supercomputer development, and, in the same time, that Europe and America are far from being experts in this segment, according to Information Week.

Furthermore, IBM and AMD seem to lead the supercomputing market, while the famous Intel has lowered its implication. "A total of 301 systems on the latest list use Intel processors, down from 333 systems six months ago. Intel's 64-bit x86 processors are being rapidly adopted in popular cluster configurations rising from use in 81 to 118 systems in the last six months. However, the company's Itanium chip fell from use in 46 to 36 supercomputers," further writes Information Week.

IBM is still ranked as the main vendor of supercomputers, with a 48.6% market share, up 43.8 % from the last analysis made earlier this year. The second largest supercomputers vendor is Hewlett-Packard, which has a 30.8% of market share, down, unfortunately, 33.8% since the last ranking. The results show that no other manufacturer gained more than 5% market share.

"A lot of companies and institutions are vying to roll out the first PetaFlops system," stated Erich Strohmaier for Information Week, a computer scientist from Lawrence Berkeley Labs, who helps maintain the Top 500 list. "But we don't expect to see anyone field that until late 2009, or perhaps earlier because this is such a huge trophy."

On the other hand, the U.S. is still the primarily supercomputer consumer market, with 298 of the systems sold. However, the difference between the researches regards the second place, occupied by the Asian dedicated market, with 93 systems, up 66, as Europe was previously on the second place, the continent ranking this time 83 systems, down 100 83 supercomputers. China is neck-to-neck with Japan, ranking 28 systems on the list, up 17 in the last six months.