Top500 Supercomputers: 486 Runs On Linux!

No surprises there. Why would any supercomputer vendor ever use anything other than an open code is beyond me. The latest Top500 list of Supercomputers is out and Linux absolutely dominates the scene while Ubuntu is the flavour that powers the world's fastest Supercomputer.

Linux Powers World's Fastest Supercomputers
Linux's absolute domination of the world's most sophisticated supercomputers doesn't come as a surprise. In fact, the enterprise sector had long embraced the Linux eco-system with open arms. So much so that, the world's fastest Supercomputer runs a Chinese derivative of Ubuntu called Ubuntu Kylin, as revealed by Mark Shuttleworth himself during his keynote speech at OpenStack Summit. Ubuntu Kylin is now an official Ubuntu flavour.

Top500 Supercomputers list reveals quite a number of interesting statistics. Out of 500 top Supercomputers, 486 of them runs on Linux, 12 on Unix, 1 mixed and 1 of them on Windows. Among the hardware vendors, HP tops the list with 35.6% market-share while IBM and Cray Inc. takes 2nd and 3rd spot with 18.2% and 14.2% market-share respectively. Curious to know who runs that lone Windows based Supercomputer? The lone remaining Windows machine is Shanghai Supercomputer Center's Magic Box built by Dawning in 2008. It's #436 on the list.

Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2) remains the world's fastest supercomputer as before (in 2013, 2014 and 2015). Situated in National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou, China, Tianhe-2 is a 33.86-petaflops supercomputer built at an estimated cost of US$390 million. Second in the list is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan supercomputer situated in United States. See the full list by Top500.

Source : http://www.techdrivein.com/2015/07/out-of-top500-supercomputers-486-runs-linux.html