For the first time Ireland has four supercomputers among the top 500 in the world, a new analysis has shown.

The development means the country is now ranked number one in the world in terms of number of top-500 supercomputers per capita.

When it comes to the question of performance, Ireland is ranked fourth globally in terms of its supercomputing power per capita.

The ninth Irish Supercomputer list, which ranks the fastest high performance computers here, shows Irish supercomputing capacity has increased by more than a third since the previous list was produced.

Irish supercomputers now have a processing capacity of 4.42 Petaflops per second, compared to 3.01 previously.

Ireland now sits at ninth place in the world in relation to the number of supercomputers it has, sharing that position with Australia, India and Saudi Arabia.

It holds eighteenth place when it comes to performance of those machines globally and sixth in the EU.

In recent years Ireland has steadily been increasing the number and performance of its supercomputers, helped by the presence here of large IT companies who continue to invest heavily in the area and some investment by the state.

The Irish Supercomputer List is maintained by an independent group of computer science researchers including academics at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Maynooth University, Dublin City University, and Queen’s University Belfast, with industry representatives from Ireland, the UK and the USA.

"It is fantastic that Ireland is continuing to make a mark on the global Top500 list," said Dr. Brett Becker of the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin who leads the maintenance of the list.

"It is important that Ireland is seen for what it is – a world leader in High Performance Computing."

However, the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) said the latest list offered a skewed view of the situation here, because most of the machines are privately owned by companies and are not available for use by outsiders.

"Ireland’s inclusion in the Top 500 Global list stands in stark contrast to Ireland’s standing in Industry and Public research," said ICHEC Director, Professor J-C Desplat.

"Irish researchers are heavily disadvantaged in their access to computational resources as they have the lowest access in the EU per capita."

"As each year passes, the Irish National HPC service remains chronically under-funded since recessionary times and has seen no investment since 2012."

"The recent list highlights the ever-widening gulf between supercomputing expenditure in industry and public research in Ireland."

The full list is available at www.IrishSupercomputerList.org.