text: Mac-based supercomputer drops to 7th place on Top500 (MacCentral) MacCentral - With performance almost double that of the Earth Simulator, in Yokohama, Japan, IBM Corp.'s Blue Gene/L on Monday was officially ranked first on the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. IBM built four of the top ten machines on the biannual list, which was set to be announced Monday evening at the SC2004 conference in Pittsburgh. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University reappeared on the list, finishing in seventh position five months after dropping off the June list because of a hardware upgrade to Apple Computer Inc.'s Xserve systems. ...