IBM’s Q System One: One More Piece of the Larger Puzzle

At SC17 in Denver, the Japanese RIKEN K computer emerged for the third straight time as the world's most powerful supercomputer based on the High Performance Conjugate Gradient (HPCG) benchmark list. Although China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer has been widely seen as number one in the world based on its LINPAC rating, the HPCG test that the K computer excelled on may be more representative of the range of real-world HPC problems encounter by users. Riken's K computer has been either number one or two since the HPCG list came out in 2014.

Worldwide factory revenue for the high-performance computing (HPC) technical server market jumped for the full-year 2018 by 15.6% over the exceptionally strong 2017 calendar year period to $13.7 billion. The 2018 result was 6.2% higher than Hyperion Research's forecast $12.9 billion figure for the year.