] ATLANTA -- Jack Dongarra is the timekeeper in a race that
] has no finish line and no winner's circle -- just leaders
] whose tenuous hold on first place is determined by
] trillonths of a second.
]
] As custodian of the industry's "Top 500 List" for more
] than a decade, Dongarra, professor at the University of
] Tennessee and a researcher at Oak Ridge National
] Laboratory, has watched the speed of the world's fastest
] computers double every 18 months or so.

An interesting article about the current state. Google's 15,000 processors would probably rank in the top 500 if the system wasn't too busy to shut down to run the benchmark tests on it. The top 500 list is at http://www.top500.org/