To IO500 Community,

The committee has received some queries about the rules concerning virtual machines for the 10 Node Challenge. As such, the committee has added the following rule:

13. For the 10 Node Challenge, there must be exactly 10 physical nodes for client processes and at least one benchmark process must run on each

1. Virtual machines can be used but the above rule must be followed. More than one virtual machine can be run on each physical node.

Although we recognize that this may disadvantage cloud architectures, we do want to stress that this rule only applies to the 10 Node Challenge. The committee did feel it was important to add this rule to ensure that the 10 Node Challenge sublist offers the maximum potential for fair comparisons by ensuring equivalent client hardware quantities. Submissions with any number/combination of virtual and physical machines can of course always be submitted to the full list.

Thank you,

The IO500 Committee