Comparing the performance of supercomputers

The main measure of performance currently used for supercomputers is the number of performed operations during the second floating point (FLOPS). It is often administered with an appropriate SI prefix. For example TeraFLOPS (TFLOPS) is 1012 FLOPS, a petaflops (PFLOPS ") is 1015 FLOPS. It is measured using appropriate test standard. The most common such test is LINPACK, which measures the speed of solving a dense system of linear equations using the Gauss method. Because many of the problems posed supercomputers can be reduced to solving such equations, this test is a convenient abstraction for measuring the effectiveness in solving such problems. Supercomputers obtaining the highest scores in this test since 1993 are published on the TOP500 list, which is updated twice a year. Another measure of the performance of supercomputers is the measure of FLOPS / watt, taking into account the speed of calculations in addition to the current consumption by supercomputers. The most effective measure supercomputers by the TOP500 list is published since 2007 on the Green500 list.