Supercomputer
A Supercomputer is a computer which leads the world in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. As such the term is rather fluid and today's supercomputer tends to become tomorrow's also-ran. Thus the term defines different computers at different times.
General-purpose supercomputers
Such computers usually gain their speed over conventional computers through the use of unconventional designs which allow them to perform many tasks in parallel, as well as complex detail engineering. They tend to be specialised for certain types of computation, usually numerical calculations, and perform poorly at more general computing tasks. Their memory hierachy is very carefully designed to ensure the processor is kept fed with data and instructions at all times - in fact, much of the performance difference between slower computers and supercomputers is due to the memory hierachy design and componentry. Their I/O systems tend to be designed to support high bandwidth, with latency less of an issue as supercomputers are not used for transaction processing. Their operating systems, often variants of UNIX, tend not to be as sophisticated as those for smaller machines since supercomputers are typically dedicated to one task at a time rather than the multitude of simultaneous jobs that makes up the workload of smaller devices.
The unusual architectures of supercomputers often dictate the use of special programming techniques to exploit their speed. Special purpose FORTRAN compilers are, suprisingly enough, often able to generate faster code than the C or C++ compilers and so FORTRAN remains the language of choice for many of the programs run on supercomputers.
Seymour Cray is intimately associated with the history of supercomputers, having designed many of the world's fastest computers throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s either for Control Data Corporation or for Cray Research.
| Period | Supercomputer | Speed | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1945-1950 | Manchester Mark I | University of Manchester, England | |
| 1950-1955 | |||
| 1955-1960 | |||
| 1960-1965 | |||
| 1965-1970 | |||
| 1970-1975 | |||
| 1975-1980 | Cray-1 | 160 MFLOPS | Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico (1976) |
| 1980-1985 | |||
| 1985-1990 | |||
| 1990-1995 | |||
| 1995-2000 | |||
| 2000-2005 | IBM ASCI White, SP Power3 375 MHz | 7226 GFLOPS | Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, California |
| 2005-2010 |
Supercomputers tend to be used for highly calculation intensive tasks such as weather forecasting, cryptanalysis, and computer animation, special effects and physical simulations. Military agencies, film companies and meteorological agencies are the main users.
Supercomputers are being replaced, for many applications, by "clusters" of cheaper computers which can be programmed to act as one large computer. Many of these use the Linux operating system.
As of November 2001, the world's fastest supercomputer is a cluster computer, ASCI White at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Special-purpose supercomputers
See also:
External links:
- See the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites for more information.
- HP announcement of contract to build Linux supercomputer
- ASCI White press release