“Intel is the main chip supplier in 402 of the 500 machines that
made the cut this time around, and 380 of those are using quad-core
processors of one generation or another. Unlike AMD’s current line
of quad-core “Shanghai” and six-core “Istanbul” processors, which
plug into existing Rev F system boards, Intel’s Xeon 5500s require
a box swap from the prior Xeon 5300 “Clovertown” and Xeon 5400
“Harpertown” series.“There are 42 machines on the list using AMD’s processors and 52
using IBM’s Power processors, both losing a little ground since the
June 2009 ranking. Dual-core processors are still in use on 59
machines (all of the Power5 and Power6 supers on the list are using
dual-core chips), and there are only four machines that employ
single-core processors in their cluster nodes.”