HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN THE US IN 1994 - AN ANALYSIS ON THE BASIS OF THE TOP500 LIST

In 1993 for the first time a list of the top 500 supercomputer sites w orldwide has been made available. The TOP500 list allows a much more d etailed and well founded analysis of the state of high performance com puting. Previously data such as the number and geographical distributi on of supercomputer installations were difficult to obtain, and only a few analysts undertook the effort to track the press releases by doze ns of vendors. With the TOP500 report now generally and easily availab le it is possible to present an analysis of the state of High Performa nce Computing (HPC) in the US. This note summarizes some of the most i mportant observations about HPC in the US as of late 1994 or early 199 5, in particular the continued dominance of the world market in HPC by the US, the market penetration by microprocessor based systems, and t he growing industrial use of supercomputers.