The developer of the most widely used test for ranking the performance of supercomputers has said his metric is out of date and proposed a new test that will be introduced starting in November. Jack Dongarra, distinguished professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee, said the Linpack test he developed in the 1970s, which has been the basis for the Top500 list of the world's fastest computers for the past 20 years, is no longer the most useful benchmark for how well a system can perform.