ORNL Upgrades Jaguar Supercomputer With 6-Core AMD Opterons

AMD has announced that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Jaguar supercomputer has been updated with new six-core AMD Opteron processors. The supercomputer and its new processors now holds the top spot on the list of the top five supercomputers in the world.

The Jaguar supercomputer previously used quad-core AMD Opteron power. Four of the top five supercomputers on the Top 5 systems list are powered by AMD processors. The former top supercomputer, now in second place, known as roadrunner also uses AMD processors.

AMD is set to launch a new processor in 2011 that will have up to 16-cores called Bulldozer. If the Jaguar with 6-core CPUs is capable of 2.3 petaflops/s theoretical peak performance and 1.75 petaflops on the Linpac benchmark, I wonder how much power the 16-core machines will have.