pdf of this release

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

November 20, 2016

Dublin, Ireland – The seventh Irish SUPERCOMPUTER list, ranking the fastest high performance computers in Ireland was released today.

The Irish Supercomputer List is celebrating three years this month. The November 2016 list shows no change since the massive changes last June (List #6) where there were six new machines, three ranking among the top 500 supercomputers globally, and a doubling of the Irish HPC aggregate performance. This is the second iteration of the ISL where there has been no change, the first being list #4 in July 2014.

In its first three years, the Irish Supercomputer List has grown from 13 machines to 27, and has seen 7 machines decommissioned. Total list performance has almost tripled from under 600 TFlops/s to nearly 1.5 PFlops/s. The list has also seen 7 Top500 machines in Ireland in the past three years, including the current Irish Top500 machine, at number 469, a 14,568 core HP clocking in at 365.9 Tflops/s. Ireland has also ranked high in terms of Top500 machines per capita, having placed #5 in July 2014 and #2 in the world in June 2016.

Irish Supercomputing List maintainer Dr. Brett Becker of the University College Dublin School of Computer Science said:

In its first three years the Irish Supercomputer List has charted one of the most exciting periods for High Performance Computing in Ireland. It is exciting that Ireland regularly features in the Top500 supercomputers on Earth, a testament to Irish commitments in investment, research, and utilisation of HPC resources by government, academia and industry. In uncertain political and economic times it is important that this commitment continues.

The Irish Supercomputer List is maintained by an independent group of computer science researchers including members at University College Dublin, Maynooth University, Dublin City University, Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Oxford, with industry representatives from Ireland, the UK and the USA.

The Irish Supercomputer List was launched in November 2013 to raise the profile of High Performance Computing (HPC) in Ireland and abroad. The list is updated twice annually (typically June and November) and there is a continuous open call for participation from users and maintainers of Irish HPC installations.

The Nov. 2016 Irish Supercomputer List is available at www.IrishSupercomputerList.org.

ENDS