The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) was recently recognized on the TOP500 List of the world's top supercomputers.

"ARL's 19-year history of having High Performance Computing (HPC) systems highly ranked in the world's TOP500 Supercomputing Sites list portrays ARL as a visionary, innovative and dynamic organization with exceptional corporate and technical leadership and world class technical research facilities," said Dr. Raju Namburu, chief of the Computational Sciences Division within ARL's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.

ARL claimed four spots on the list, which ranks the 500 most powerful commercially available computer systems as determined by the LINPACK Benchmark.

The benchmark used in the LINPACK Benchmark to determine to TOP500 List is to solve a dense system of linear equations that allows the user to scale the size of the problem and to optimize the software in order to achieve the best performance for a given machine.

Namburu said that strong technical leadership and corporate commitment have positioned ARL to achieve consistently high rankings on the TOP500 List.

"ARL's Computational Science Division's research expertise in HPC architectures and computational technologies and research relationships with supercomputer industry leaders, such as IBM, Intel, AMD, Cray Research and many others ensures procurement of next generation HPC acquisition to meet increasing computational requirements of the Department of Defense (DoD) S&E/T&E communities," said Namburu.

Assembled in 1993, and compiled twice a year with help from high-performance computer experts, computational scientists, manufacturers and the Internet community in general, the TOP500 List sets out to provide a ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications.

According to the TOP500 project, the TOP500 List and the statistics it shows on high-performance computers are of great interest to manufacturers, users and potential users because such statistics can facilitate the establishment of collaborations, the exchange of data and software and provide a better understanding of the high-performance computer market.

Namburu added that recognition on the TOP500 List also firmly establishes ARL as a recognized leader in the national and international supercomputing community and conveys the laboratory's strong commitment to providing world class technical research facilities.

"ARL DoD Supercomputing Resource Center provides world class computational resources to the Research, Development and Engineering Command and DoD laboratories to solve the most complex and challenging problems in DoD's mission to equip the U.S. warfighter with the best possible systems and Soldier technologies, now and in the future," stated Namburu.

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The U.S. Army Research Laboratory

ARL computer systems rank among the world's fastest supercomputers