Semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is gaining ground over its cross-town rival, Intel Corp., as the company's processors posted the largest gain in supercomputing applications in the past year.

A list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, maintained by research institutes and universities around the world, was updated on Monday to show 22.6 percent growth in systems that use AMD processors. A total of 113 of the 500 systems are now using AMD's Opteron family CPU's, the group said. This supplants IBM's Power Processors - used in 18.6 percent of the systems - out of its number two spot.

While Intel maintains the lead overall, being used in a total of 261 supercomputers, the Santa Clara based company has lost 66.6 percent of supercomputing market share to rivals. Last year, the firm's chips were used in 333 supercomputers.

The firm also noted that dual core processors from both manufacturers are becoming widespread. Already, 75 systems use Opteron dual core processors and 31 systems use the new Intel Woodcrest dual core chips.

The TOP500 list is compiled by Professor Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Ibm Intel