Five Apple Systems on Top 500 Supercomputer List

The latest list of the worldis fastest supercomputers is now out, and Apple is represented by five sites in the top 500, although all of them have dropped since the last ranking six months ago. Colsais Mach 5 placed the highest, at number 21, although it was number 15 previously.

Macworld UK noted that Virginia Techis highly-touted System X is now number 28. It was number 14 a year ago and number 20 six months ago. The Turing system at the University of Illinois is now number 114 (from 85), the University of Californiais Dawson is 462nd (from 303) and Bowie State Universityis Xseed is number 468 (from 304).

BlueGene/L, which was jointly developed by IBM and the Department of Energyis National Nuclear Security Administration, was number one, a slot it has occupied for the past three lists.

301 systems on the list use Intel processors while 84 of them use IBMis PowerPC, which is featured in all of the Apple-based supercomputers. AMD is represented in 81 systems.