SUPERCOMPUTER

GROUP 4

Members

ACUÑA, JOHN RAFAEL

ADJID, JUHANDI

GALLETO, EDWARD ARON

MONOPOLLO, MICHELLE

PAGAYONAN, KATHRINA

ROMERO, CZARINA

SOLIS, RIZALYN

TOREJA, JONJI
SUPERCOMPUTER
A Supercomputer is a system that can solve complicated calculations quickly. Apart from working with
weather forecast, nuclear industry and airline industry, a supercomputer can also be used to play video
games and render 3D graphics.

A supercomputer is a very powerful computer that can do billions of operations per second. They are
computers that are very fast, large, expensive, and with the biggest storage capacity in the world. These
computers have a large main memory (RAM) capacity that can reach a petabyte (PB) and operation speeds
of exaflops. Supercomputers differ from personal computers in several ways as indicated in another of your
article here.

Seymour R. Cray
• First who invented supercomputer and known as the Father of
Supercomputer.

CDC 6600
• The first supercomputer that was released in 1964.
• The CDC 6600 is arguably the first supercomputer. It had the fastest clock
speed for its day: 100 nanoseconds. It was one of the first computers to use
Freon refrigerant cooling and the first commercial computer to use a cathode-
ray tube console.

Supercomputers classification and types

• Supercomputers are classified into either special or general purposes.

Special purpose supercomputers

These are designed for a specific purpose and cannot be used for any other function. They are designed to
tackle a specific problem. These systems spend their energy and resource to solve that specific assigned
problem. An example of a special-purpose supercomputer is IBM Deep Blue which was designed to play
the chess game.

General purpose supercomputers

These are computer systems that can be used for a variety of activities. They can be used to solve different
problems at different times. General-purpose supercomputers are further classified into 3:

1. Tightly connected clusters of computers

These are groups of computers connected and work as a single unit to solve a common problem. There are
4 ways that clusters can be created to connect these computers which give us 4 types of clusters: Director-
based clusters, Two-node clusters, multi-node clusters, and massively parallel clusters.

2. Vector processor

This is where the processor can execute an entire array of data elements at the same time rather than working
on one element at a time. This introduces a kind of parallelism where all elements in an array are operated
same time. These supercomputer processors are arranged in arrays that can be able to operate on many data
elements at the same time.
3. Commodity computers

This is made up of ordinary (common personal computers) that are connected with high bandwidth fast
Local Area Network (LAN). These computers then implement parallel computing, where they work on a
single task together.

Features and characteristics of supercomputer.

• Have multiple processors: a supercomputer is made up of thousands or millions of Central

Processing Units (CPUs) that have many cores within them. The fastest computer (Frontier) has
over 8.7 million cores.
• They operate at a very high speed: supercomputers operate at a very high speed compared to other
current computing devices.
• High-capacity main memory: the system is made up of many nodes and each has its memory
addresses which can total up to petabytes of RAM. The frontier which is the fastest computer in
the world has around 9.2 petabytes of memory. Other supercomputers have even a high capacity of
RAM.
• They utilize parallel processing: this is a technique where many processors work together to solve
a specific calculation simultaneously. Each processor work on a part of the calculation to help solve
the problem as fast as possible.
• Most runs on customized Linux versions of the operating system. Linux-based operating systems
are used since they are open source, and they execute commands faster.

Uses of supercomputers

• Weather forecasting: the systems are used to read and predict how the weather will change over
time. They can also be used to test in case of a tsunami or other natural catastrophe happening and
what damage can they cause.
• Oil and gas exploration: supercomputers are used to explore new gas and oil area and try and
approximate how many resources are on the ground.
• Simulation: the systems are used to carry out simulations of situations that can be dangerous if
they are done in real life. Simulation helps to be prepared in case a situation like that ever happens.
• Medical research: Supercomputers were used during the COVID-19 pandemic to try to get the
best methods to solve the problems. They are also used to learning more about diseases and coming
up with new medicine for different problems.
• Big data mining: big data is the latest avenue of analyzing data which requires a lot of computing
power. These computers are used to process and analyze data and come up with patterns for
decision-making.
• Military and defense: military uses these computers to simulate situations such as nuclear war and
other latest warfare equipment.
• molecular modeling
• Cloud computing: companies like GOOGLE and AMAZON who are big players in cloud
computing services provision used supercomputers to run their systems.

Advantages of using supercomputers

• They have a very high processing speed: supercomputers can do billions of operations per second.
They are so fast to the extent that the work that an ordinary personal computer can take 1 year they
can perform in minutes.
• High storage capacity: they store a lot of data hence they have a large storage capacity.
• Multiuser: supercomputers are multiuser computers which means many users can work on them
simultaneously.
• They are used to solve complex numeric calculations very fast.
Disadvantages of supercomputers

• Consume a lot of power: these computers have many processors which means they require a lot of
power to power them.
• They overheat: many CPUs in these systems generate a lot of heat, hence overheating.
Supercomputer requires special types of cooling system to deal with generated heat.
• Expensive: these computers are the most expensive computer in the world. Mostly they are owned
by the government or big institutions and companies.
• They are huge: supercomputer occupies a very big physical location. They can fit within a whole
building floor.
• They require specialists to maintain and operate.

Examples of 10 most powerful supercomputers in 2022

According to the Top500 list for June 2022 the following are some of the top 10 examples of the most
powerful supercomputers in the world.

1. Frontier is ranked 1st with 1.102 Exaflop/s using 8,730,112 cores.

2. Fugaku, from Japan, comes second with 7,630,848 cores which achieve 442 Pflop/s.

3. LUMI system, in Finland at number 3 with 151.9 Pflop/s and 1,110,144 cores.

4. Summit, an IBM-built system at ORNL in Tennessee, USA, is listed as Number 4 with a

performance of 148.8 Pflop/s and 2,414,592 cores.
5. Sierra in the USA is ranked 5th with a performance of 94.6 Pflop/s with 1,572,480 cores.

6. Sunway TaihuLight is a system developed in China that comes number 6 with the performance
of 93 Pflop/s and 10,649,600 cores.

7. Perlmutter at number 7 can do 64.6 Pflop/s using 761,856 cores.

8. Selene in the USA achieves 63.4 Pflop/s with 555,520 cores.

9. Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A) comes as number 9 with 61.4 Pflop/s and 4,981,760 cores.

10. The last in the top 10 supercomputers in the world is the Adastra system installed at GENCI-
CINES which achieves 46.1 Pflop/s using 319,072 cores.