K computer: 8.162 PetaFLOPS massively parallel scalar supercomputer built with over 548k cores
Hiroyuki Miyazaki, Yoshihiro Kusano, Hiroshi Okano, Tatsumi Nakada, Ken Seki, Toshiyuki Shimizu, Naoki Shinjo, Fumiyoshi Shoji, Atsuya Uno, Motoyoshi Kurokawa · 2012
Many high-performance CPUs employ a multicore architecture with a moderate clock frequency and wide instruction issue, including SIMD extensions, to achieve high performance while retaining a practical power consumption. As demand for supercomputer performance grows faster than the rate that improvements are made to CPU performance, the total number of cores of high-end supercomputers has increased tremendously. Efficient handling of large numbers of cores is a key aspect in the design of supercomputers. Building a supercomputer with lower power consumption and significant reliability is also important from the viewpoints of cost and availability.