The world's top supercomputer 60% _unix Linux with Linux systems

U.S. local time March 15 06:00 (Beijing time March 15 19:00) news that, according to statistics, in the world's top 500 supercomputers, about 60% installed the Linux operating system, compared to other types of operating systems, Linux systems in High-performance computing applications occupy the absolute advantage.

From the beginning as a college student's private hobby, the development of Linux system has gone through a long time. In recent years, with professional computer programmers such as IBM, HP, Novell and Red Hat improving, Linux is now a powerful synonym for-linux operating systems are far more prevalent on supercomputers worldwide than in other systems. Some 60% of the world's top 500 supercomputers are estimated to have installed Linux operating systems, replacing the previously installed UNIX operating systems that were used extensively for high-performance computing, according to agencies.

Linux is now the preferred operating system for high-performance computing. According to Hans Weiner-Moore, a computer professor at the University of Mannheim in Germany, 301 of the world's top 500 supercomputers use the Linux operating system, compared to just 189 using UNIX operating systems, 2 uses UNIX's improved FreeBSD operating system, 1 uses Microsoft's operating system, and another 7 uses an unknown operating system.

"Linux systems have dominated the market for high-performance computing," says Mark Seager, assistant deputy director of advanced Technology at Livermore National Laboratory in the United States. "The lab has 5 supercomputers among the top 500 supercomputers, including the world's most powerful supercomputer," Blue Gene/L "and the 5th" Thunder ". The two computers, like other supercomputers in the lab, have a Linux operating system installed. These machines were previously installed on the IBM version of the UNIX operating system--aix operating system.

In part, says Sigma, the lab chose Linux because it was "open source," meaning that users could modify the code to suit their own needs. In addition, use

Linux systems also do not have to pay a licensing fee. In addition, Sigma says, the reason Linux systems go beyond UNIX operating systems (such as IBM's AIX operating system and the Solaris operating system of Sun Microsystems) is that these systems contain a lot of features for business applications, but these also limit the performance of the system. Sigma, for example, explains that the "virtual capabilities" of the AIX operating system allow many software to share the same processor, but this "just degrades performance".

Linux System founder Linus Torvalds (Linus Torvalds) believes Linux systems are popular because they can run on more than 20 hardware architectures, including Intel microprocessors and IBM and HP RISC processors, while UNIX operating systems can only run on one to two hardware architectures. "Of course, only a few of these 20 architectures are related to high-performance computing," says Torvalds. But it's still a huge advantage. Linux is easy to access, has no licensing costs, has all the appropriate infrastructure, and runs smoothly on any hardware. ”