Information About Super Computers
Simply put, super computers are the fastest and most powerful computers on the planet. They have exceedingly superior processing capacities over ordinary computers and are usually custom-built for certain companies or organizations. Super computers are also generally designed for specific computing and calculating purposes. Because of rapid technological advancements, however, today's super computers easily become tomorrow's ordinary computer, so the term "super computer" is rather fluid; it does not apply to a specific type of computer and is relative to the current technology.
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History
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In the 1960s, Seymour Cray designed super computers for the Control Data Corporation. Cray later left CDC in the '70s and built his own company, Cray Research, which soon took over the super computers market. From 1985 to 1990, his company held the top spot in super computing. The mid-1990s saw the "super computer market crash" with the advent of the minicomputer market.
Manufacturers
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Today, super computers are built by traditional computer companies including IBM, Cray and Hewlett-Packard, which purchased many of the now-defunct 1980s super computer companies. As of 2008, the fastest super computer in the world is the IBM Roadrunner, located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
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Evolution
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Early super computers designed by Cray were simply machines designed to be very fast scalar processors, about 10 times those of the fastest computers offered by other computer companies. In the 1970s, the focus was on running a vector processor. In early to mid '80s, the focus was on running four to 16 vector processors in parallel. By the late '80s and early '90s, the attention was turned to massive parallel processing systems of thousands of ordinary CPUs, some off-the-shelf and others custom-built. Today, parallel designs are off-the-shelf server-class microprocessors such as Xeon, Opteron and PowerPC. Also, most modern super computers are highly tuned computer clusters that use commodity processors with custom interconnections.
Mechanism
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Just like any other ordinary computer, super computers have two primary parts---the CPU, which executes commands, and the memory, which stores the data. Super computers have CPUs that are opened at faster speeds than ordinary computers and, thus, are able to process data faster. Manufacturers of super computers use advanced, state-of-the-art technology in connecting circuits to optimize the function of the machine. The circuits they use are usually smaller in length so that the information from the memory can be transmitted to the CPU in a lot less time than it takes for a standard computer processor to do the same.
Common Uses
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Super computers are used for highly specific and calculation-intensive and sensitive tasks in various fields in the sciences, military and research. For the the latter, the use of super computers covers climate research, weather forecasting, quantum mechanical physics, molecular modeling, physical simulations and cryptanalysis. Users of super computers include military agencies, major universities and scientific research laboratories.
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