Supercomputer Information
A supercomputer is an extremely fast data-processing oriented computer. Supercomputers are also called "high-performance computers" because of their capability to crunch power measuring in gigaflops or billions of floating point operations. Supercomputers are used to solve complex computational problems, process hundreds of billions of calculations per second and simulate complex commercial research laboratories' and military sciences' experiments.
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Significance
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Supercomputers with their faster-speed Central Processing Units (CPUs) are designed to do calculations and solve other computational problems faster than conventional powerful computers. They make use of a high-level of parallelism to enhance the processing speed. Supercomputers were earlier developed for weapons design research and development, national security purposes and university-led theoretical projects. Latest advances in power, performance and productivity have ensured that they are now also being retooled to run complex and varied mainstream industry and consumer applications.
Extremely High Processing Speed Capabilities
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Supercomputers are acknowledged as the fastest computers available. Latest generation supercomputers are capable of doing one thousand trillion calculations per second or 1 petaflop. Such power and processing capabilities enable scientific, government and research organizations and commercial enterprises to run and manage increasingly complex scientific, engineering and commercial applications, compute high data-intensive and mathematical calculations, simulate physical reality experiments and scenarios and solve tough technical problems.
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Widespread Industry Applications
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Supercomputers were predominantly used by military and defense research agencies, universities and independent research centers and high-end engineering corporations. Now, new generation and less-expensive supercomputers are finding usage across sectors and business domains. These high-performance supercomputing systems offer the acknowledged power and sophisticated processing capabilities without the cost and complexity of earlier-generation supercomputers. They are being used in computational fluid dynamics, electronic design, petroleum exploration and production, long-term weather forecasting, nuclear energy research, meteorology and structural analysis.
Research Demands of Universities
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Major universities in America and others with large endowments have large research centers and development facilities conducting basic/fundamental research and other industry and government-funded innovation programs. Researchers, scientists and engineers need to crunch and process hundreds of millions of individual pieces of data and simulate various high-performance experiments. Supercomputers are replacing conventional computer systems in these universities and enabling the research community and laboratory/ tech personnel to execute jobs and tasks in lesser time and conduct more complex analysis on larger data structures and data sets.
Major Vendors
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Tech giants IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) are the top two vendors manufacturing a variety of supercomputer systems to suit the requirements of sectors and businesses. IBM's Blue Gene Supercomputer series has facilitated breakthroughs in science, analytics and energy efficiency. IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer is configured to function for the current era of the Internet and cloud computing and will provide enhanced and massive computing power for mainstream applications. HP's Unified Cluster Portfolio supercomputers are used by U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other civilian and defense agencies.
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