A supercomputer is a type of computer that has the architecture, resources and components to achieve massive computing power. Today's supercomputers consists of tens of thousands of processors that are able to perform billions and trillions of calculations or computations per second.
Today's supercomputers are made up of thousands of connected processors, and their speed has grown exponentially over the past few decades. The first supercomputer, released in 1964, was called the CDC 6600. It used a single processor to achieve 3 million calculations per second. While that may sound impressive, it is tens of thousands of times slower than an iPhone.
Supercomputers are primarily are designed to be used in enterprises and organizations that require massive computing power. A supercomputer incorporates architectural and operational principles from parallel and grid processing, where a process is simultaneously executed on thousands of processors or is distributed among them. Although supercomputers houses thousands of processors and require substantial floor space, they contain most of the key components of a typical computer, including a processor(s), peripheral devices, connectors, an operating system and applications.
As of 2013, IBM Sequoia is the fastest supercomputer to date. It has more than 98,000 processors that allow it to process at a speed of 16,000 trillion calculations per second.
Today's supercomputers are made up of thousands of connected processors, and their speed has grown exponentially over the past few decades. The first supercomputer, released in 1964, was called the CDC 6600. It used a single processor to achieve 3 million calculations per second. While that may sound impressive, it is tens of thousands of times slower than an iPhone.
Faster supercomputers on the horizon
By surpassing China, the U.S. has escalated the tech rivalry between the two countries.
As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC, "There's no question the race is on, but this is not the space race, this is the race to knowledge."
But faster supercomputers are already on the horizon. The European Union, Japan and China are all developing machines they say will outperform Summit. The next big frontier is exascale computing, that is, computers that can perform a billion times a billion calculations per second.
John Kelly, IBM Senior Vice President of Cognitive Solutions and Research, says, "Think about what you can do with a system that every billionth of a second it does a billion calculations. We can model and simulate systems that we can't model and simulate today, and we can discover from the world's data insights into major breakthroughs in the area of healthcare, science, materials, etc."
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