National Center for Computational Sciences

A supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now the fifth fastest in the world, while a supercomputer it plans to have in operation by next year will be much quicker.

The Top500 list, released Thursday, also includes a new University of Tennessee supercomputer at No. 57 after only a few short months in operation.

“It is tremendous that UT and the National Institute for Computational Sciences have joined the ranks of the elite in high-performance computing with Kraken, the Cray XT3 system, debuting at 57 in the Top500 list,” Thomas Zacharia, ORNL associate director and UT vice president for science and technology, was quoted as saying in a UT news release. “In just two weeks, we will further upgrade Kraken to approximately a 170 teraflops Cray XT4 with AMD quad-core processors, which will place Kraken among the Top 10 computers in the world. In the coming months and years, NICS will continue to emerge as a global hub for scientific computing.”

The ranking is part of the Top500 List, released Thursday by a group of scientists including Jack Dongarra, UT-Knoxville distinguished professor.

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