Linux becomes the most popular operating system for supercomputers

In the latest global Top 500 supercomputer rankings, Linux based supercomputers occupy 476 seats, up from 95.2%. Today Linux has become a eminence in supercomputing, but since its inception, Linux has not always been the dominant position in the field of computing.

In recent years, Linux has successfully replaced Unix as the most favored operating system by supercomputers

Linux was only emerging in June 1993, when the world's first global top 500 supercomputer list was released. In fact, it was not until 1993 that the first successful Linux distribution--slackware Linux and Debian Linux.

Next, as the Linux Foundation says in an upcoming report, the data analysis of supercomputers and Linux from the TOP500 International organization in the field of computing performance over the past 20 years shows that Linux first appeared on the top 500 list since 1998, Over the past decade it has dominated the top 500 operating systems, and since June 2010, Linux based supercomputers have reached more than 90% per cent of the 500-strong list.

Before Linux was the dominant superpower, supercomputers used UNIX as the operating system. But since 2003, there has been a marked turnaround, with the UNIX system, which originally occupied the 500-strong list of 96%, completely transformed the Linux system, which occupies the same share. By the year 2004, Linux had completely dominated the field of computation.

According to the Linux Foundation, Linux has become the driving force behind computational performance and has driven innovation in computational research and technology. In other words, Linux has managed to dominate Supercomputing, and at least most supercomputers are using Linux, which effectively helps developers drive and solve computational power constraints and bottlenecks. ”

The Foundation believes that this situation is mainly based on the following two reasons. First, since most of the world's top supercomputers are superscalar architecture research machines, they are built primarily to deal with specialized special tasks. Each supercomputer is a stand-alone project with unique features and optimization requirements. Therefore, it is not realistic to develop a specially tailored operating system for each system. But for Linux platforms, the research team can easily modify and optimize them, and make some breakthrough designs to meet the needs of modern supercomputers.

Another important factor is that "for a customized, self supported Linux distribution, the licensing costs are the same whether you are using 20 nodes or 20 million nodes." "In addition," by leveraging the vast open source Linux community, your major projects are free of technical support and development resources, making it possible for developers to have the same or lower cost of operating system costs. ”

As a result, supercomputers will be faster and faster. Judging by the total peak operation, the maximum operational performance of a supercomputer increases by one times every 14 months, and has greatly exceeded Moore's law (the number of transistors embedded in the chip will increase by about one Linpack every 24 months). ）。 In high-end products, supercomputing operations are faster. Take the world's top 500 list, its fastest supercomputer peak has increased twice times, that is, from the 1993 CM-5 ' s 59.7 gigaflop/s to 2013 years of the 33.86 quadrillion floating-point operation speed, to the current speed of Tianhe second.

As a result, the Linux Foundation concludes: "With the global Super 500 data from 20, separating peak operations and operating systems, we can clearly see that Linux is not just for the majority of today's supercomputers, which has had a significant boost over the past decade in the disproportionate growth of supercomputing performance." In the future, Linux will also help to explore the mysteries of the universe and solve the toughest problems in real life, in addition to continuing to drive progress and innovation in computing. ”

In this respect, we also have to raise both hands and feet to express recognition.

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