How does a supercomputer work?
Supercomputers are computers that pioneered the amount of computing power per unit of time in the world. Supercomputers were built in the 1960s. Today, supercomputers are devices that major companies such as IBM and HP Most supercomputers also perform vector calculations. Each supercomputer usually has 14 to 16 vector processors.
Software programs
Software programs developed to work on these supercomputers include PVM, MPI, and gaming text software tools such as Open mosix, warewufl, and beowulf, which are required to produce supercomputers with a large number of servers. In computer science, programming is still simple. It is not done for supercomputers and applications of these devices have very high costs.
Cloud application
These supercomputers usually perform important calculations in quantum physics, meteorology, climate research, (global warming information), molecular modeling (such as polymers and crystals, biological macromolecules, structures and contents of chemical compounds), physical simulations, (Such as nuclear research, aircraft and vehicle simulations) are used. These supercomputers have considerable ability to solve problems that no other computer has the power and have high computing power in the shortest time.
Supercomputer technology and problems in supercomputers
These devices generate a lot of heat during operation, and cooling the components of this supercomputer is a problem for the users of these devices. In these devices, the data transfer speed is equal to the speed of light and can not be more than that. A supercomputer with a width of several meters should have a data transfer delay of ten nanoseconds. For this reason, the designers tried to use shorter cables between the cloud Computers use and for this reason the cylinder of these devices was created.
To send a message between processors, they calculate a very large amount of information in a short processing time and the result. Technologies produced for supercomputers include the following:
- Vector processing
- Liquid cooling
- Uneven access to memory (numa)
- Corrugated discs
Cloud Computing Features
Unlike ordinary computers, supercomputers have more than one processor and perform practical and logical computational operations in sequence. Using powerful processors is essential for heavy computing. Fast data retrieval and instructions are required for high-speed computing in the CPU. Most computers use much larger storage capacity.
Unit of measurement and computing in the supercomputer
A teraflop is a way to calculate the amount of computer hardware in terms of mathematical capacity. A teraflop is the capacity of a processor to calculate one trillion floating points per second. Use for calculations.
Traflop is the number of mathematical equations that a processor can process per second. Different devices may have different amounts of floppies, and it expresses the power of the processor.
What are the characteristics of the world’s supercomputers?
LASSEN supercomputer
This supercomputer was developed by IBM at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . It was designed and built for research .
SUPERMUC-NG
This model is the largest and most powerful supercomputer in the European Union with the technology of LENOVO and Intel companies, which was built and launched in 2019 . The processor speed of this large computer is 19.5 petaflops.
ABCI supercomputer
This device is in the top rank of supercomputers and is manufactured by Fujisto Company and belongs to the Japan Technology Organization. This device is designed as a source of artificial intelligence based on cloud computing and is used by important companies and research organizations.
PIZ DAINT supercomputer
This supercomputer has 25 petaflops of power. It is located in the Swiss National Center and is used in extensive research in physics, geophysics, climatology and data science.
FRONTERA
This device is made by DELL company. It is used in advanced computing at the University of Texas. Its power is 23.5 petaflubs and this supercomputer is used in the fields of astrophysics, materials science, genomics, and modeling of natural layers.
SUMMIT Supercomputer
Today, it is the most powerful supercomputer built in the United States for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Its size is equivalent to two basketball courts. It is used in the production and research of artificial intelligence.
Application of supercomputers
Do you know why an organization needs a system with Petaflop processing power.
Application of supercomputers in industry
General Electric, one of the leading companies in the aerospace industry, in cooperation with jet simulation laboratories requires the use of powerful computers. Scientists use it in laboratories to technically develop and collect data related to submarines. With the help of these developments, created by supercomputers, they were able to find oil reserves around European countries without the need to rely on other countries.
One of the most important applications of these computers was at Boeing, which was able to achieve better results in aerodynamic design by simulating flights. In large medical centers such as Cornell Medical University, supercomputers designed a model of the hepatitis C virus and found many treatments for it. At present, these devices in various centers collect information and perform calculations at a high level and provide important results in research in all fields.
A growing example of the supercomputer industry is the production and manufacture of quantum computers. In this example, computers deal with atomic particles instead of transistor components.
A supercomputer literally means a relatively powerful miniframe computer. Mainframe refers to giant computers that take up a lot of space, such as a large room or a hall. In fact, today’s supercomputers are located in a large space with an efficient ventilation system and include a large number of cabinets and network connections between computers.
Technologies and difficulties of supercomputers
In supercomputers that have a large number of CPUs that run in parallel, pausing for one to five microseconds to send a message between processors is common. To send a message between processors, they consume and produce a very large amount of information in a short time. “It’s a means of sending messages between processors that limits computational issues to I / O,” says Ken Becher.
History of supercomputers
The same companies that bought many companies in the 1990s to use their experience. The term supercomputer is not very stable. Today’s supercomputer may become a regular computer tomorrow. In the 1970s, most supercomputers performed vector calculations, and many competitors and new manufacturers introduced their own low-cost processors in the same way they did to market.
Each machine typically had fourteen to sixteen processors. (in business parlance, called deadly micro-attacks). Nowadays, parallel schemes are made based on ready-made server-type microprocessors, including Power PC, Itanium, x. 86-64 and the most modern supercomputers are precision-configured computer clusters with compact processors and custom, case-by-case internal interfaces.
Supercomputer software tools
Supercomputers are used for functions such as forecasting weather and weather trends, simulating nuclear tests, conducting pharmaceutical research, and leaving encryption keys. Some of the early projects were for research into possible genetic predictions of cancer or drug addiction. A supercomputer is the computer that performs the highest level of computing performance today.
At any given time, there are several popular supercomputers that run at very high speeds compared to other computers. The term is also sometimes applied to computers that are much slower than high-end supercomputers (but still very fast). The largest and most powerful supercomputers are multi-computers that do parallel processing, and in general, there are two methods of parallel processing called symmetric processing (SMP) and parallel mass processing (MPP).
The term supercomputer denotes a computer designed to achieve high performance, in particular in terms of computing speed. Supercomputers are used, among other things, to make weather forecasts, study the climate, do molecular modeling, and generate physical or financial simulations. These machines derive their exceptional power from a special architecture and ultra-fast electronic components. Among the difficulties in the use and development of supercomputers, we can mention their power supply – they often require a power of several megawatts – and their air conditioning needs, because they produce a lot of heat.
Tianhe-2, the most powerful supercomputer in the world
The power of a consumer computer is of the order of 0.0001 petaflop. In November 2015, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Tianhe-2, developed by a Chinese university and the company Inspur, had a computing power of 33.86 petaflops. This figure corresponds to nearly 34 million billion floating point operations per second.
Its runner-up is American and has a computing power of 17.59 petaflops. Barack Obama had revealed the ambition for the United States to commission a supercomputer with a power of 1,000 petaflops by 2023!
A supercomputer made up of 7.3 million cores
Manufacturers have opted for A64FX 48-core SoCs produced by Fujitsu. For the first time, a supercomputer based on ARM processors dominates the Top500 ranking.
The last update of the Top 500, the famous list of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world, recorded only one new entry in the top 10. What confirms that, although these devices continue to improve their performance. performance, the pace of innovation slows down. Newcomer Perlmutter is an American supercomputer that entered directly into fifth place in the June edition of the rankings, de facto pushing Nvidia’s Selene device back to sixth.
With 64.6 petaflops, Perlmutter is establishing itself as the most notable new computer on this list. Last, but not least, the device also performed well in the Green 500 list, which focuses on the energy efficiency of supercomputers, seizing the sixth place, thanks to an energy efficiency of 25.55 gigaflops per watt.