Last updated on January 27th, 2024 at 05:52 pm
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Have you ever wondered what a supercomputer is? A supercomputer is one of the lesser-known types of computer because it is not designed for home use. Additionally, its size and abhorrent price put it out of reach of the common man.
So, what is a supercomputer, exactly? A supercomputer is a computer that has been programmed to perform at a much higher level than a personal computer. They are faster, larger, and far more expensive than any general-purpose computer. In fact, supercomputers are the fastest computers in the world. The speed of supercomputers is measured in floating point operations (FLOPS) per second.
What is the processing power of a supercomputer?
Supercomputers are generally much faster than general-purpose computers. The performance of supercomputers is measured in floating point operations per second (FLOPS). Since 2018, with the development of the Summit, there are now supercomputers whose performance is measured in exaFLOPS.
Exaflops is 10¹⁸ floating point operations per second or one quintillion floating point operations per second.
If you found this article interesting, you may also be interested in learning what a mainframe computer is and its uses. Additionally, you should visit our article on mobile devices and desktop computers to learn what they are, their uses, and processing speed.
What is the supercomputer used for?
Supercomputers are used for data-intensive computer processing, engineering, and science. Some tasks we use supercomputers for are:
- Weather forecasting;
- Oil and gas exploration;
- Molecular modeling;
- Physical simulations;
- Aerodynamics;
- Nuclear fusion research; and
- Cryptoanalysis.
Features of a supercomputer:
Supercomputers:
- Have multiple CPUs;
- Are thousands of times faster than your general-purpose personal computer;
- Have much higher storage capacity than your PC computer; and
- It can be used by several persons at the same time.
What is the fastest Supercomputer available today?
As of June 2022, the fastest supercomputer in the world is the USA’s frontier.
Speed: 1102 petaFLOPS (1.102 exaFLOPS) on the LINPACK benchmark. It is able to process more than a billion, billion operations per second. These are called exaflops.
It was built by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
Are you interested in learning about other types of computers? The embedded computer is a special computer that works as an integral part of another machine. Visit embedded devices for more information.
Four examples of supercomputers are:
For those of you who would like to dive a little deeper, we have put together a list of four of the most powerful computers in the world. In fact, at the time of writing this article, these computers, along with the Frontier, have been ranked the world’s five fastest supercomputers available today.
So how fast are the world’s most powerful computers? Keep reading to learn.
The Fagaku, developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu, was recognized as the world’s fastest Supercomputer in June 2020. However, in May 2022, it lost its position as the world’s fastest supercomputer to be replaced by the Frontier. The Fajaku is three times faster than the LUMI.
- It was built with the Fujitsu A64FX Microprocessor;
- The LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) supercomputer is considered the third fastest supercomputer in the world;
- It has the computing power of more than 375 petaflops; and
- It uses next-generation 64-core AMD EPYC CPU and AMD Radion Instinct GPUs.
Summit, also referred to as OLCF-4, built by IBM, is considered the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world. From 2018 to 2020, it held the distinction of being the world’s fastest supercomputer until it was replaced in 2020 by Fagaku.
- The Summit is also called the OLCF-4 after the Oakridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), where it is housed; and
- It was the first computer with the computing power of exaflops.
The Sierra supercomputer, ranked the fifth fastest in the world, was developed for the Lawrence Livermore National Library in the United States.
- It is used by the National Nuclear Security Administration to test and maintain nuclear weapons; and
- It runs on the IBM POWER9 CPU along with Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs.
Are you an information technology student? Then you may be interested in our article on the components of a computer system.
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