Linux might be struggling for a decent desktop market share but it is definitely ruling the world of supercomputers. Linux is the supercomputer operating system by choice.
As per the latest report from Top 500, Linux now runs on all of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world. The previous number was 498 as remaining two supercomputers ran Unix.
Top500 is an independent project that was launched in 1993 to benchmark supercomputers. It publishes the details about the top 500 fastest supercomputers known to them, twice a year. You can go the website and filter out the list based on various criteria such as country, OS type, vendors etc.
Don’t worry. I am going to list some of the most interesting facts from this report. But before let’s discuss why Linux is the preferred choice of an operating system for supercomputers.
Linux rules supercomputers because of its open source nature
20 years back, most of the supercomputers ran Unix. But eventually, Linux took the lead and become the preferred choice of operating system for the supercomputers.
The main reason for this growth is the open source nature of Linux. Supercomputers are specific devices built for specific purposes. This requires a custom operating system optimized for those specific needs.
Unix, being a closed source and propriety operating system, is an expensive deal when it comes to customization. Linux, on the other hand, is free and easier to customize. Engineering teams can easily customize a Linux-based operating system for each of the supercomputers.
However, I wonder why open source variants such as FreeBSD failed to gain popularity on supercomputers.
To give you a year wise summary of Linux shares on the top 500 supercomputers:
- In 2012: 94%
- In 2013: 95%
- In 2014: 97%
- In 2015: 97.2%
- In 2016: 99.6%
- In 2017: 99.6%
- In 2018: 100%
- In 2019: 100%
Some interesting facts about top 500 supercomputers
- United States of America has the top two fastest supercomputers thanks to IBM.
- China has the most number of supercomputers as it owns 219 out of top 500 supercomputers. The USA falls in second place with 116 entries in the top 500.
- Japan is in third place with 29, followed by France with 19, UK with 18 and Germany with 14. India and Saudi Arabia have 3 each while Russia has 2 supercomputers.
- Out of the top 10 fastest supercomputers, USA has 5, China has 2 while Japan, Germany and Switzerland have 1 each.
Do share this article on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels. It’s an achievement for Linux and we got to show off. Who knows, if they get inspired and start to learn Linux.
The article has been republished in June, 2019 because there has been only a few changes from the previous years.
I’ve been a *nix person since the ’80s, first UNIX (actually SCO Xenix) then Linux. There are no window$ in my life.
And I own the entire hardcover collection of Agatha Christie’s books!
The lack of other operating systems comes primarily from the fact that nobody cares: “operating system for supercomputers” is a nonexisting market, there’s no money to make there.
Also, are you sure? I seem to remember some IBM systems – BlueGene family, eg Sequoia – used to run mostly CNK, with Linux on IO nodes.
Amazing how many of the top machine / or machines overall / are Lenovo c1040. Seems like the vast majority are Xeon based machines. What would it be like to have 5 million Xeon cores?
I used an academic supercomputer (at least a few cycles) for a few years in the early 1990s. Big change from today. I can put that much power together in the basement using $100 cast off Dell servers.
Note that saying “Linux” is not saying much. You can bet they are not
Ubuntu. I also wonder about the lack of BSD, and I suppose it must be the lack of kernel development in BSD to allow parallel processing.
Linux has become a mess and a quagmire. I used Slackware starting in early 1994 (I think.) It was simple and fast and very clean.
I have recently tried pure Ubuntu … what a user interface mess. Like a fragmentation grenade. At that time moving code, even Fortran, from slackware to HP-IX to Cornell’s supercomputer was a pain. Never expected to see the most powerfull computers using the same processor family as a desktop. Thank you intel.
I am astounded how many application operations (at least on XFCE) require a mouse. Nothing super about that.
Still. In early 1988 1,000 MB of ram (each MB was 9 individual DIPP chips) cost $100,000. Now that memory is cheap, software is so bloated with operations and intensive memory use as to make computing SLOW. Never expected to use up 1GB of RAM in a few minutes of using Firefox or Chrome. All that memory has to be serviced. What the heck happened? Seems like all the compilier coders are graduates of Microsoft.
Plus, actually getting work on one data set to actually spread across cores is not as easy as one would assume …. at least in my experience.
Computing life is good. 2019: 1TB drive is less than $40. 1984: a 20MB drive was $400 to $500. And reliability is two orders of magnitude or more.
I say Kubuntu or other Debian based distro with KDE Plasma as Desktop Environment.
It is a curious contrast: the most used operating system in supercomputers and, however, an outcast, an absolute fiasco in desktop computers.
Linux was designed by computer scientists, for computer scientists, not for home users.
why do you say its a fiasco? windows is horrible. Linux is a fiasco if you dont want to look for the right system.
Take a look at Fedora30 and experience linux power in desktop computing
Your statement seems 10y behind the facts, Linux is great for desktops. With many apps being web-based nowadays there’s hardly anything you can’t do from Linux, think e.g. office365. Now is the time to use it, it’s never been that easy. I use Opensuse, a distro mentioned too little in the Foss articles I find, while derived from Suse, one of the oldest and leading distros around.
it is truth i have lenovo ideapad with amed what ever i try to install [linux]after first reboot do not open nothing .everything look like nothings.
masti sell my laptop to buy one antic?