and certifies their functionality. TOP500 A list of the most powerful high-performance computers can be found on the TOP500 list. The TOP500 list ranks the world's 500 fastest high-performance computers, as measured by the High Performance LINPACK (HPL) benchmark. Not all computers are listed, either because they are ineligible (e.g., they cannot run the HPL benchmark) or because their owners have not submitted an HPL score (e.g., because they do not wish the size of their system to become public information for defense reasons). In addition, the use of the single LINPACK benchmark is controversial, in that no single measure can test all aspects of a high-performance computer. To help overcome the limitations of the LINPACK test, the U.S. government commissioned one of its originators, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, to create a suite of benchmark tests that includes LINPACK and others, called the HPC Challenge benchmark suite. This evolving suite has been used in some HPC procurements, but, because it is not reducible to a single number, it has been unable to overcome the publicity advantage of the less useful TOP500 LINPACK test. The TOP500 list is updated twice a year, once in June at the ISC European Supercomputing Conference and again at a US Supercomputing Conference in November. Many ideas for the new wave of grid computing were originally borrowed from HPC. High performance computing in the cloud Traditionally, HPC has involved an on-premise infrastructure, investing in supercomputers or computer clusters. Over the last decade, cloud computing has grown in popularity for offering computer resources in the commercial sector regardless of their investment capabilities. Some characteristics like scalability, and containerization also have raised interest in academia. However security in the cloud concerns such as data confidentiality are still considered when selecting a cloud or on-premise HPC. See also High-performance technical computing Distributed computing Parallel computing Computational science Quantum computing Metacomputing Supercomputer Grand Challenge High Productivity Computing Systems High-availability cluster High-throughput computing Many-task computing Urgent computing Cloud computing References External links HPCwire Top 500 supercomputers Rocks Clusters Open-Source High Performance Linux Clusters News Articles & Policy Reports on High-Performance Scientific Computing The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens (MIEP) The Art of HPC: Textbooks by Victor Eijkhout of TACC Vol.1: The Science of Computing Vol.2: Parallel Programming for Science Engineering Vol.3: Introduction to Scientific Programming in C++17/Fortran2008 Vol.4: Tutorials for High Performance Scientific Computing Parallel computing