The Register has an uncanny knack of scooping almost all computer publications. It has done it again tracking down the biggest supercomputer installations in the world. A list ranking the top supercomputers in China at the end of 2007:
China Petroleum and Chemical’s IBM, a cluster of servers running on Xeon chips.
China Meteorological Administration, also IBM.
Shanghai Supercomputer Center with a cluster made by Dawning.
The China Meteorological Administration again.
All pretty standard.
The systems ranked 5-10 appear to be identical 1950-core clusters built by HP belong to ‘Gaming Company.’ Which is The9 — a video game distributor.
The9 owns at least 12 of the Top 100 machines in China and may have up to 16 systems on the list.
The9 has at least 18,032 cores of processing power – a mix of Xeons, Opterons and even Itaniums – dedicated to distributing games throughout mainland China.
12 of the top Chinese systems rank among the 500 fastest machines in the world.
10% of China’s top computers work at the single task of sending out video games to the millions of local players.
The9 has licenses to so-called MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Granado Espada and its own Joyful Journey West.
Whence the name The9?
Adding to the existing eight modes of art, namely, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, dance, drama and movie, are online games as the ninth mode.
Hence The9.
Source: The Register