A supercomputer is a computer A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data, and provides output in a useful format that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray Seymour Roger Cray was a U.S. electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded the company Cray Research which would build many of these machines. Called "the father of supercomputing," Cray has been credited with creating the supercomputer at Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc. (CRI). CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, (CDC), which led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research Cray Inc. is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995, while Cray Research was bought by SGI the next year. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in parallel to the creation of the minicomputer A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). The class at one time formed a distinct group with its own hardware and operating systems, but the market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash".
Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as Cray Cray Inc. is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Already a legend in his field by this time, Cray put his company on the map in 1976 with the release of the Cray-1 vector computer. Seymour Cray went on to form the, IBM International Business Machines , abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. IBM manufactures and sells computer and Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is an information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA. HP is one of the world's largest information technology companies and operates in nearly every country. HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware,, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience. As of July 2009[update], the Cray Jaguar is the fastest supercomputer in the world World is a common name for the sum of human civilization living, specifically human experience, history, or the 'human condition' in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth. In a philosophical context, it may refer to the Universe, everything that constitutes reality. Some authors, such as Carl Sagan, use the term worlds to refer to heavenly.
The term supercomputer itself is rather fluid, and today's supercomputer tends to become tomorrow's ordinary computer A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data, and provides output in a useful format. CDC's early machines were simply very fast scalar processors Scalar processors represent the simplest class of computer processors. A scalar processor processes one data item at a time . In a vector processor, by contrast, a single instruction operates simultaneously on multiple data items. The difference is analogous to the difference between scalar and vector arithmetic, some ten times the speed of the fastest machines offered by other companies. In the 1970s most supercomputers were dedicated to running a vector processor A vector processor, or array processor, is a CPU design where the instruction set includes operations that can perform mathematical operations on multiple data elements simultaneously. This is in contrast to a scalar processor which handles one element at a time using multiple instructions. The vast majority of CPUs are scalar . Vector processors, and many of the newer players developed their own such processors at a lower price to enter the market. The early and mid-1980s saw machines with a modest number of vector processors working in parallel to become the standard. Typical numbers of processors were in the range of four to sixteen. In the later 1980s and 1990s, attention turned from vector processors to massive parallel processing Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level, instruction level, data, and task parallelism systems with thousands of "ordinary" CPUs The Central Processing Unit or the processor is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions. This term has been in use in the computer industry at least since the early 1960s . The form, design and implementation of CPUs have changed, some being off the shelf units Commercial, off-the-shelf or simply off the shelf (OTS, which may also include free software) computer software or hardware, technology, or computer products, are ready-made and available for sale, lease, or license to the general public. They are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The and others being custom designs. Today, parallel designs are based on "off the shelf" server-class microprocessors A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit (IC, or microchip). The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal (BCD) arithmetic on 4-bit words. Other embedded uses of 4- and 8-bit, such as the PowerPC Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors. PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIM's PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform initiatives in the 1990s and while the architecture is well known for being used by Apple's Macintosh lines from 1994 to 2006 , its use in, Opteron The Opteron is AMD's x86 server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture . It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core (K8) and was intended to compete in the server and workstation markets, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor, or Xeon The Xeon is a brand of multiprocessing- or multi-package-capable x86 microprocessors from Intel Corporation targeted at the non-consumer server, workstation and embedded system markets, and most modern supercomputers are now highly-tuned computer clusters A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and/or availability over that of a single computer, using commodity processors combined with custom interconnects.
Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems involving quantum physics Quantum mechanics is a set of scientific principles describing the known behavior of energy and matter that predominate at the atomic and subatomic scales. QM gets its name from the notion of a quantum, and that quantum value is the Planck constant. The wave–particle duality of energy and matter at the atomic scale provides a unified view of the, weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia, and formally since at least the nineteenth century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current, climate research, molecular modeling Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses principles of computer science to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses the results of theoretical chemistry, incorporated into efficient computer programs, to calculate the structures and properties of molecules and solids. While its results normally complement the information (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules A macromolecule is a very large molecule most often created by some form of polymerization. In the context of biochemistry, the term may be applied to the four conventional biopolymers , as well as non-polymeric molecules with large molecular mass such as macrocycles. The constituent molecules from which macromolecules are assembled are called, polymers, and crystals), physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind tunnels Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles in free flight. The wind tunnel was envisioned as a means of reversing the usual paradigm: instead of the air's standing still and the aircraft moving at speed through it, the same effect would be obtained if the aircraft stood still and the air moved at speed past it. In that way a, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion, and research into nuclear fusion In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple like-charged atomic nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus. It is accompanied by the release or absorption of energy, which allows matter to enter a plasma state). A particular class of problems, known as Grand Challenge problems, are problems whose full solution requires semi-infinite computing resources.
Relevant here is the distinction between capability computing and capacity computing, as defined by Graham et al. Capability computing is typically thought of as using the maximum computing power to solve a large problem in the shortest amount of time. Often a capability system is able to solve a problem of a size or complexity that no other computer can. Capacity computing in contrast is typically thought of as using efficient cost-effective computing power to solve somewhat large problems or many small problems or to prepare for a run on a capability system.
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Data Center Journal
High performance computing or HPC has given way to supercomputing over the past twenty years. More specifically, scale out server cluster architecture has ...
HP Unified Cluster Portfolio Now Features Voltaire's Ethernet and InfiniBand ... TMCnet
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A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world s fastest supercomputers Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list which is compiled twice a year with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers Its Blue Gene L supercomputer used to ensure the
Anas Qtiesh
Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:04:03 GM
Wael Alwani said on his blog [ar] that Syrian Students at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) are forbidden from using Shaheen, a US made . supercomputer. , due to technology export sanctions imposed by the US ...
