All About Supercomputers

Recently a friend told me he didn’t know what a supercomputer was. In response to his question, I put together this blog.

Ray Kurzweil has said that the computer in your cell phone is about 10,000 more powerful than the ENIAC -the first government computer that filled a room.

XGRID in Virginia Tech

Quote: With a price of $5.2 million, practically anyone can build a system of a scale that is necessary for high-end computing research. The same G5 that runs on a desktop, is used in tandom with 1100 other G5s to interconnect to a supercomputer.

At the time of the above video, it quotes the fastest supercomputers in the world as:

1. Earth Simulator in Japan
2. Los Alamos Lab
3. Virginia Tech
4. NCSA
5. Pacific NW Lab

The current list can be found here:

The TOP 500 Wikipedia Summary

and here The TOP 500
IBM Hydro-Cluster Supercomputer

One big water heater!

Now that you’ve built your supercomputer, what to do with it?

Wikipedia – SuperComputer – Common Uses
Computer Musuum Tour of Seymour Cray’s First Computers

RoadRunner in Los Alamos New Mexico

Runs Linux, 16000 Opteron cores, and 16000 Cell Chips.

NSA’s SuperComputer

8000 tons of water! Can do in 2 seconds what your home computer would take 22,000 years to do. Used for cryptology at NSA.

IBM’s Blue Gene P – Argon Lab

Open Science…

Need a SuperComputer for the Home or Office

Deskside “SuperComputer”?

Yes it runs Windows! HPC 2008 version. Or RedHat.

NVidia Tesla
At SC08 NVIDIA announces the Tesla™ Personal Supercomputer. Experience cluster level computing performance—up to 250 times faster than standard PCs and workstations—right at your desk

CNET News – Counts down the Top 5 SuperComputers

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