Red Hat Powers the Future of Supercomputing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the operating system backbone for the top three supercomputers in the world and four out of the top 10, according to the newest TOP500 ranking. Already serving as a catalyst for enterprise innovation across the hybrid cloud, these rankings also show that the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform can deliver a foundation to meet even the most demanding computing environments.

In the top ten of the current TOP500 list, Red Hat Enterprise Linux serves as the operating system for:

• Fugaku, the top-ranked supercomputer in the world based at RIKEN Center for Computational Sciences in Kobe, Japan.
• Summit, the number two-ranked supercomputer based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
• Sierra, the third-ranked supercomputer globally based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.
• Marconi-100, the ninth-ranked supercomputer installed at CINECA research center in Italy.

High-performance computing across architectures

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is engineered to deliver a consistent, standardized and high-performance experience across nearly any certified architecture and hardware configuration. These same exacting standards and consistency are also brought to supercomputing environments, providing a predictable and reliable interface regardless of the underlying hardware.

Fugaku is the first Arm-based system to take first place on the TOP500 list, highlighting Red Hat’s commitment to the Arm ecosystem from the datacenter to the high-performance computing laboratory. Sierra, Summit and Marconi-100 all boast IBM POWER9-based infrastructure with NVIDIA GPUs; combined, these four systems produce more than 680 petaflops of processing power to fuel a broad range of scientific research applications.

In addition to enabling this immense computation power, Red Hat Enterprise Linux also underpins six out of the top 10 most power-efficient supercomputers on the planet according to the Green500 list. Systems on the list are measured in terms of both performance results and the power consumed achieving those. When it comes to sustainable supercomputing the premium is put on finding a balanced approach for the most energy-efficient performance.

In the top ten of the Green500 list, Red Hat Enterprise Linux serves as the operating system for:

• A64FX prototype, at number four, was created as the prototype system to test and develop the Fugaku supercomputer and is based at Fujitsu’s plant in Numazu, Japan.
• AIMOS, the number five supercomputer on the Green500 list based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
• Satori, the seventh-ranked most power-efficient system in the world, installed at MIT Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It serves as the home for the Mass Open Cloud (MOC) project, where Red Hat supports a number of activities.
• Summit at number eight.
• Fugaku at number nine.
• Marconi-100 at number ten.

From the laboratory to the datacenter and beyond

Modern supercomputers are no longer purpose-built monoliths constructed from expensive bespoke components. Each supercomputer deployment powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses hardware that can be purchased and integrated into any datacenter, making it feasible for organizations to use enterprise systems that are similar to those breaking scientific barriers. Regardless of the underlying hardware, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the common control plane for supercomputers to be run, managed and maintained in the same manner as traditional IT systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux also opens supercomputing applications up to advancements in enterprise IT, including Linux containers. Working closely in open source communities with organizations like the Supercomputing Containers project, Red Hat is helping to drive advancements to make Podman, Skopeo and Buildah, components of Red Hat’s distributed container toolkit, more accessible for building and deploying containerized supercomputing applications.

Supporting Quote

Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, Red Hat

“Supercomputing is no longer the domain of custom-built hardware and software. With the proliferation of Linux across architectures, high-performance computing has now become about delivering scalable computational power to fuel scientific breakthroughs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux already provides the foundation for innovation to the enterprise world and, with the recent results of the TOP500 list, we’re pleased to now provide this same accessible, flexible and open platform to the world’s fastest and some of the most power-efficient computers.”

Steve Conway, senior adviser, HPC Market Dynamics, Hyperion Research

“Every one of the world's TOP500 most powerful supercomputers runs on Linux, and a recent study we did confirmed that Red Hat is the most popular vendor-supported Linux solution in the global high performance computing market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed to run seamlessly on a variety of architectures underlying leading supercomputers, playing an important part in driving HPC into new markets and use cases, including AI, enterprise computing, quantum computing and cloud computing."

Satoshi Matsuoka, director, RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS); professor, Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology

“Fugaku represents a new wave of supercomputing, delivering the performance, scale and efficiency to help create new scientific breakthroughs and further drive research innovation. A key consideration of the project was to deliver an open source software stack, starting with the addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Arm-based processors, we have been able to make supercomputing resources accessible and manageable by our distributed community of scientists and simplify development and deployment of a broader range of workloads and applications.”

Professor Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Manchester

“Computing innovation and scientific advancement is not done in a vacuum - the supercomputing community, from laboratories to the vendor ecosystem, collaborates to help drive breakthroughs at both the architectural and the research level. Red Hat is a key part of this global community, helping to deliver a standards-based, open control plane that can make all of this processing power accessible and usable to an extensive range of scientists across disciplines.”

Additional Resources

• Read more about how Red Hat is bringing IT innovations to high-performance computing
• Learn about how Red Hat helped to build America’s fastest supercomputers: Summit and Sierra
• Find out more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Connect with Red Hat

• Learn more about Red Hat
• Get more news in the Red Hat newsroom
• Read the Red Hat blog
• Follow Red Hat on Twitter
• Join Red Hat on Facebook
• Watch Red Hat videos on YouTube
• Follow Red Hat on LinkedIn

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company or its parent International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200702005245/en/