The DOE does not appear to be standing still. Its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plans to unveil the IBM Sequoia system in 2012 that will exceed 20 petaflops. Also that year, the DOE's Argonne National Lab should have its next-generation IBM Blue Gene supercomputer running, which will offer 10 petaflops.

The TOP500 list is compiled twice a year by researchers at the University of Mannheim, Germany; the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Participation, which is voluntary, requires that the computer run the , a set of routines that solve linear equations.

In this iteration, seven systems achieved a performance of 1 petaflop or better. Three of these systems reside in the U.S., two in China, and one each in France and Japan.

Intel dominates the list in terms of processors. A total of 406 systems are now using Intel chips, though this is down slightly from June, when 408 Intel-based systems were on the list. Intel competitor Advanced Micro Devices has supplied processors for 57 systems. Twenty-eight systems use GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) to help with calculations.

On the system provider side, IBM and Hewlett-Packard are the leaders. IBM has 200 systems on the list and HP has 158 systems.