via 451 CAOS Theory

I haven’t realized yet how far Linux extremely dominates the Supercomputing market as Operating System.

Evolution of the Linux OS share in the Top500 (Supercomputing 2009):

• November 2007: 84.6%
• November 2007: 87.8%
• November 2009: 89.2%

All Top10 systems are based on Linux.

The 451 Group published also another “worth-to-read” article about Open source software and the need for speed.

We’ve also seen speed as a factor for building and providing cloud computing infrastructure. Vendors report that Linux is ideal for cloud construction since the availability of source code means that unecessary pieces can be relatively easily and quickly cut out of the OS.

BY the way, more than 80% of the Top500 systems are using Intel computers, 10% IBM Power processors, and 8% AMD Opteron. More than 85% are already based on Quad-core processors! HP is delivering 42% of the servers, and IBM 37% (source: Top500 computer sites).

And: 82% of the Top500 systems integrate between 2’000 and 8’000 processors. 1% more than 128’000 processors (source: Top500 computer sites)!

And: the Top1 (a Lab of the US Department of Energy) uses 224’162 AMD Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz processors and generates 1’759 TFlops (source: Top500 computer sites).