Zipf & Supercomputers
Matei Ripeanu has a short note in IEEE Distributed Systems Online comparing the performance of supercomputers from the TOP500 list to a power law.
Interesting notes by Ian Foster:
- Plot of performance versus rank is a power law.
- The power law coefficient is getting smaller with time. Ian says that “bigger machines are getting faster more slowly than slower machines.” It also means that the gap between the first and last ranks on list is shrinking.
- Top rankers are more likely to buy faster machines to maintain their ranks. The act of measuring performance evolution changes that very evolution (insert smart QM remark here…)