What is Supercomputer? Characteristics, Applications, Types, Examples

What is Supercomputer? Characteristics, Applications, Types, Examples

What is Supercomputer?

Definition – Supercomputers have a huge performance compare to other using general purpose computer because its architectural and operational model depend on the parallel and grid processing. Primary motive to design of supercomputer was to be used in large scale organizations where need more computing power.

supercomputer

Supercomputer has a power to execute many processes simultaneously on thousand of processors, because these types of processors can execute billions and trillion of instructions per seconds, so its computing performance matrix is FLOPS (that is floating-point operations per second). So these types of supercomputers are more expensive they can 5 lakh dollars to 200 million dollars.

Read More – Complete Guide to Mainframe Computer

History of Supercomputer

Read More – Types of Computer and Their Functions

The first supercomputer was designed by Seymour Cray in 1960 in Control Data Corporation (CDC).Control Data Corporation produced supercomputer in which computer more processor were embedded so its speed ten time more fastest compare to those computer, which were produced  by other companies. Before later 1980s, many types of vector processors were used in the supercomputer in four to sixteen levels.

Nowadays, supercomputers are designed by the traditional “companies”. For example, IBM, Cray and Hewlett-Packard. Tianhe-1A supercomputer is the fastest supercomputer since October 2010 that is located in the Chine. I hope that you are aware some things about what is supercomputer.

Types of Supercomputer

Read More – Different Components of Mainframe Computer

The supercomputer has to divide into three categories such as Vector processing machines, tightly connected cluster computer and in finally commodity computer.

Vector processing machines: This machine was invented in 1980 to 1990s. In which arrange the all processor in the array form, and its CPU is capable to execute all huge mathematically operations in a few time.

Tightly connected cluster computer: In these types of system, connect all groups of computers and assigned the task to all group equally so the reason of this clustering enhanced the speed of computer. There are four types of cluster like as Director-based clusters, Two-node clusters, Multi-node clusters, and massively parallel clusters.

Commodity Cluster: In this system, high-bandwidth low-latency local area networks were interconnected by the Commodity computer.

There are some types of Supercomputer with detail:

  1. Titan
  2. IBM Sequoia
  3. K Computer
  4. Tianhe-I
  5. Jaguar
  6. IBM Roadrunner
  7. NEBULAE
  8. KRAKEN
  9. PLEIADES
  10. JUGENE

Titan:

Titan supercomputer was designed by the Cray Company in their Oak ridge national laboratory. This Titan supercomputer developed for the specific scientific project like as large atomic molecular huge simulator code.

IBM Sequoia:

IBM Sequoia supercomputer was invented by industry weight, IBM at the national nuclear security administration, in 2012. Prime goal of producing this computer, implement those supercomputer in simulation of nuclear weapons. Blue Gene/L name replaced to earlier updation of supercomputer.

K Computer:

K computer was designed by company Fujitsu in the Japan. Main objective of this type of supercomputer implement in the diagnose, climatic, and disaster preventation. Its speed calculated Rmax 10.51 PFLOPS. Presently, this supercomputer is placed in the at Riken University at computer science department.

Tianhe-I:

The Tianhe was assigned the first rank as fasted supercomputer in the year 2010-2011, its speed was Rmax 2.566 PFLOPS. This supercomputer was developed with estimated cost 490 millin dolor. Applications areas of this computer were petroleum exploration and design aircraft.

Jaguar:

The Jaguar supercomputer came in the market before the Titan computer, and made by the Cray Company in their Oak ridge national laboratory in Tennessee. This supercomputer’s speed counted as 1.750 TeraFLOPS. This computers were developed for manage some complicated problems such as climate modeling, renewable energy, scientific simulations for exploration and fusion among other. Jaguar supercomputer built by 37,376 six-core AMD Istanbul processors.

IBM Roadrunner:

This powerful project was chased by IBM in the year 2008. It was developed in the Los Angeles national laboratory, and its speed 1.026 petaFLOPS. The usages of these types of supercomputer were done in nuclear arsenal. That computer was more energy efficiency supercomputer in year 2009.

NEBULAE:

Nebulae supercomputer is places in Shenzhen, China. Its speed was 1.271 PFLOPS. Nebulae supercomputer was designed by Dawning TC3600 Blade system along with Intel X5650 processors and NVidia Tesla C2050 GPU.

KRAKEN:

Kraken was other updated Cray XT5 system, and placed in computational science(NICS). Main objective of developing was done for increasing the efficiency of the biofuel and weather modeling. NICS having a good partnership in between the Tennessee University and Oak Ridge National Lab.

PLEIADES:

Pleiades supercomputer placed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. In the Pleiades supercomputer embedded the 14,080 Intel Xeon quad-core processors.

JUGENE:

Jugene supercomputer was developed by IBM BlueGene/P technology, and in this computer use 72,000 processors. Its application areas are environment research, simulation material science, and other science research labs.

Application of Supercomputer

Read More – Important Functions of Mainframe Computer

There are many application areas where to use of supercomputer such as

Biology Areas:

Mostly, supercomputer used to diagnose for various diseases, and provide the assistance for producing good result in strokes, brain injuries and other blood flow issues in your body.

Military and Defense Missions:

Supercomputing help to provide virtual testing for nuclear explosion and weapon ballistics.

Climate Patterns:

Supercomputer application is able to study and understand climate patterns.

Airlines Industry:

With the help of supercomputer, designed the flight simulators for newbie pilots and this simulator help to training for new pilots.

Weather Forecasting:

To gather the information related to weather forecasting, supercomputer run in the NOAA’s system, means National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA system is able to execute all types of simple and logically instructions.

Scientific Research areas:

In the weather and science research areas depend on the supercomputer because for analyzing data from the exploring solar system, satellites that rounding earth, and other area such as nuclear research.

Advance database :(Data Mining)

Some large scale companies need the supercomputer for extracting useful information from data storage house or in the cloud system. Such as insurance companies.

Financial Market Place:

Supercomputer plays vital role in the real financial success in the emerging online currency world such as bit coin and stock market.

Simulated Environment in Automobile:

Supercomputer provides the help to people for buying vehicle because before purchasing the vehicle customer can test through simulation environment that is created by supercomputer.

Smog Control System:

Scientists use supercomputers in own laboratory for predicting the fog and other pollution level on the particular areas, and then take final step to prevent them.

Characteristics of Supercomputer

Read More – Several Examples of Mainframe Computer

  1. These types of computers are able to solve large amount of calculations, and complicated calculation as well.
  2. Multiple users are capable to access supercomputer at same time.
  3. Having more expensive so any ordinary users can not purchase that computer.
  4. Use for special areas where need to high amount and complicated calculations.
  5. Having huge storage capacity.

Advantages of Supercomputer

Read More – Different Applications of Mainframe Computer

We will discuss about features of Supercomputer and advantages as well.

Enhance your Protection:

This supercomputer can easily decrypt your password for your security purpose.

Not more expensive according to work:

More organizations use this computer as part time, because supercomputer is able to perform big task in few times.

Implement in filming:

The supercomputer has superb power of rending the animation in excellent result.

Virtual testing:

Supercomputer allow us to virtual testing for nuclear weapons and other dangerous medical testing, because these types of testing more harmful for environment if implement this on real time testing. 

Other Advantages are:

  • Not more processing tome
  • Protect to environment
  • Used for R&D
  • Advance Graphic capability

Disadvantages of Supercomputer

Read More – Features of Mainframe Computer

  • More Expensive
  • Need more space for setup
  • Not useful for broad applications
  • Not able to replace physical testing
  • Need well trained staff
  • Required more maintenance
  • Need massive external storage for huge data
  • High power requirements
  • Need water cooling in addition to an A/C system, because supercomputer produces more heat during processing time.

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