It’s June, so it’s that time again for the twice-yearly Top 500 supercomputer list, where bragging rights are established or, in most cases, reaffirmed. The list constantly shifts as new trends appear, and one of them might be a break in Intel’s dominance.
Supercomputers in the top 10 list include a lot of IBM Power-based systems, and almost all run Nvidia GPUs. But there’s more going on than that.
For starters, an ARM supercomputer has shown up, at #156. Astra at Sandia National Laboratories is an HPE system running Cavium (now Marvell) ThunderX2 processors. It debuted on the list at #204 last November, but thanks to upgrades, it has moved up the list. It won’t be the last ARM server to show up, either.
