Who wouldn’t want to be able to choose, among a bunch of supercomputers, one to take home? Or am I wrong? Of course, prepare the electricity bill, because the expense will be astronomical.
In response to its name, it is possible that many users conceive the supercomputer erroneously , as a personal computer with the highest performance, for example. However, this is not, at all, nor half successful.
Do you want to know what a supercomputer is? Let’s see it here today, knowing all its history, its main characteristics and, of course, the uses that are given >. In addition, to finish surprising you, we are going to leave you with a top of the most powerful supercomputers that currently exist, so you can know their amazing real performance.
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What are the supercomputers in computing? Definition
Supercomputer is that computer equipment that has a very high calculation capacity, is designed for a specific purpose and has a design that is really great .
To achieve this, what is done is to form a system of several very powerful computers , which are part of the same structure and, therefore, are linked to each other, so that both power and performance multiply . At present, these systems are also designated as high performance computers or computing environments.
Although they are large devices and with some complexity, the truth is that what they are looking for is that they work with a good number of floating operations per second , for which there is a concept, the FLOPS . This measures, as we say, the amount of operations that the machines are capable of and corresponds to a unit of performance measurement.
History
This type of computer is introduced “in the market” in the 70s . Most of them appeared thanks Seymour Cray, a dominant company at the time that was responsible for its design and manufacturing . In the beginning they were nothing more than scalar processors of maximum speed.
The next step is taken by competitiveness with minicomputers. This consisted of the inclusion of some vector processors working in parallel , between 4 and 16. This is how they began to lower their price and improve, expanding the number and type of users who used them.
Evolution
It is from here that we begin to see changes to consider in the equipment. From the vectors, the massive parallel processor systems with common CPUs were counted by thousands.
Then, when the microprocessor was developed and tested properly, it was changed to replace the processor with this , considerably reducing the number of parts to be used in the design of each supercomputer. During the last decades, the microprocessor-server has been chosen.
Thus, we have that at present the concept of supercomputer is maintained in terms of function and power, but it has changed considerably both its appearance and the type and quantity of parts used, giving clusters of highly tuned computing devices that work with conventional high-capacity processors , with thousands and even millions of cores, that combine , yes, with special interconnections.
What are the Supercomputers for?
Since their birth, supercomputers have had very specific objectives. S and designed to perform bulk volume calculation operations in very short periods of time (millions of seconds per second).
That is the basic function that all of them have, although the purpose can be very different . For example, we would talk about weather predictions, quantum physics problems, physical, spatial and nuclear simulations, research on climate change, research on the biological processes of the human body and its implications in diseases and to work on problems that are still to be resolved. …
Thus, the main users of these machines are large corporations and organizations such as academics, government, military and , in some cases, business for huge multinational corporations.
What are the main features of this type of super computers?
Supercomputers, as we have mentioned, have all kinds of parts and pieces. Although, what characterizes them most would be:
- Processor . The speed of processing is key to get millions and millions of operations per second. For this, in addition to an especially effective model, a very large number of cores is required.
- RAM memory . In line with the above, and you need to have a spectacular RAM of several Tebibytes.
- Cooling system . Cooling systems are essential to combat the very high temperatures that occur in the system. To get an idea, some processors are able to dissipate, by 10, the heat of a stove disk.
- Interconnection capacity . It is necessary that, in large environments, thousands of users can be connected at the same time.
Other characteristics that we can define of these machines are that lack social penetration capacity (neither interest is given), that they are very difficult to use, so much that only specialized personnel can do that Their size is enormous, they have achieved the achievement of many social milestones, especially in research and that there are fewer than a thousand worldwide and do not require peripherals.
The 10 most powerful Supercomputers in the world
After having told you about the incredible specifications of this type of equipment, we could not finish without telling you what the most powerful supercomputers that have been manufactured have been.
Shaheen II
It was built by Cry.Inc together with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which is now the owner. It has been used since 2015 in these facilities.
With a Linux OS, the Cray, it is impossible not to be surprised to learn that it has almost 200,000 cores in its processor , which is, by the way, the Xeon E5-2698v3 16C This forece a yield of 5537 TFLOP / s. More surprising is knowing your energy requirement, which is “only” 2800 KW.
Hazel Hen
Cray.Inc is responsible for the design and manufacture, in 2015, of Hazel Hen, a 41-cab supercomputer with the Xeon E5-2680v3 12C of 185088 cores . Its performance is 7.42 PetaFLOPS / s . The operating system is the same as in the previous case. In this case we have to, although the average power is unknown, it is quite efficient, with a maximum known figure of 1512 KW.
Piz Daint
Cray.Inc is also responsible for this manufacturing that goes directly to Switzerland, where it has been located since 2013, specifically in the National Supercomputing Center. Today is the best supercomputer on the continent .
It is achieved thanks to its Xeon E5-2670 8C processor that works at 2.6 GHz and 115984 cores , its 28 cabins and a theoretical performance of 7.8 petaFLOPS that we have seen which, in progress, is doubled, having already reached 19.6 petaFLOPS . We repeat SO.
Trinity
It is used by both the US Department of Energy. UU., The National Nuclear Safety Administration and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where it is currently located.
We repeat manufacturer and operating system and find a Xeon E5-2698v3 16C at 2.3 GHz that includes more than 380000 cores . The processing it achieves is greater than 27000 theoretical TFLOPS / s . Its memory is 365056 GB.
Tianhe-2 h3>
We found it in China, at the Supercomputing Center. Its manufacturer was NUDT and started working in Guangzhou in 2013.
Its OS is Kylin Linux, the processor is a Intel Xeon E5-2692v2 12C at 2.2 GHz of 3.12 million cores . It is thus able to yield 33.86 TFlop / s , working at 17808 kW.
Sunway TaihuLight
We finished the list with another supercomputer located in China, at the Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. Manufacturing, in this case, came from the hand of NRCPC and began operating very recently, in 2016.
Its operating system is exclusive, Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5, which is based on Linux. It has more than 10 million cores in its Sunway SW26010 260C processor at 1.45 GHz. We get a performance of 93 TFlops at 15371 kW.
K Computer
Another great machine, this time, Japanese, that works with a SPARC64 VIIIfx at 2 GHz that has 700,000 cores . The performance it offers reaches 10.5 TFLOP per second . In return, the energy output amounts to 12659 KW. The OS is Linux. We have it at the RIKEN Advanced Computer Science Center.
Sequoia
IBM was responsible for manufacturing this device in 2012, specific and exclusive for the National Nuclear Safety Administration of the United States, being in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Its processor is a Power BQC 16C with a million and a half cores as well as a performance of more than 17 TFlop / s . Work with Linux Its consumption power is 7890 kW.
Titan
It yields at a rate of 17.59 petaflops thanks to its Opteron 6274 16C at 2.2 GHz of more than half a million cores . It has Cray Linux Enviroment and an Nvidia GPU. The Cray.Inc factory is found in the Oak Ridgem National Laboratory in the United States.
Look
The IBM factory in 2012 and since then is located in the Argonne National Laboratory. The processor, in this case, is a Power BQC 16C with astonishing almost 800,000 cores . Performance exceeds 8586 TFLOPS / s every second. It has Linux and works at 3945 KW.