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Microprocessor Architectures in the top500 list.

The top500 list has been swamped by x86 machines over the last several years.  Anyone who knows me is aware that I am NO fan of the x86 ISA.

Somewhat heartening is that the most recent list seen a resurgence in other architectures. 

The Power architecture from IBM has been a fixture on the list for a long and is still a strong contender even though it has fallen to No. 12 from No. 9 last time and No. 1 in November of 2007.

A Sparc machine has captured the No. 1 place this year and is actually as powerful as the the No. 2 through No. 6 systems combined.

The Chinese MIPS based Loongson processor is starting to make some noise and the Dawning 6000 is reported to eventually reach a Petaflop in computing power.

One other note is that an increasing number of machines in the top500 list rely heavily on GPUs.  The No. 2 machine on the current list, the Chinese Tianhe-1a machine, is comprised of 14,336 Intel Xeon processors and 7,168 Nvidia Tesla GPUs.

Now I guess we just have to wait to see an ARM based system hit the list.
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