Supercomputers and Their Applications

Supercomputers outperform general-purpose computers as their structural and operational models rely on parallel and grid processing. The primary motivation for creating a supercomputer was to employ it in huge enterprises that need greater processing capability.

• Supercomputers are the world’s fastest computers, capable of swiftly processing massive quantities of data.
• The processing speed of a “supercomputer” is very rapid compared to that of a general purpose computer.
• The processing speed is measured in FLOPS (floating-point operations per second) rather than MIPS.
• It is composed of tens of thousands of processors that are capable of doing billions and trillions of operations. Supercomputers can perform up to nearly a hundred quadrillion FLOPS.
• They have advanced from a grid-based computing system to a cluster-based massively parallel computing system.
• Cluster system computing denotes several processors in a single system rather than arrays of individual computers connected through a network.
• These are colossal computers in terms of size. A strong supercomputer may range in size from a few feet to hundreds of feet.
• The cost of a supercomputer is fairly high, ranging from two lakh dollars to more than one hundred million dollars.
• Seymour Cray invented supercomputers in the 1960s with the Atlas at the University of Manchester.
• CDC 1604 is the world’s first supercomputer produced by the Cray.
• The Sunway TaihuLight ranks third in the list of top 500 supercomputers. It was developed by China’s National Research Centre for Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC),, with a High-Performance Linpack(HPL) benchmark of 93.01 petaflops.

Characteristics of Supercomputer:

• Supercomputers are capable of simultaneously serving more than a hundred users.
• These computers are capable of doing massive computations that people are incapable of performing, i.e., humans are incapable of solving such complicated calculations.
• Supercomputers are used in situations when a large amount of data and intricate calculations are required.
• Supercomputers have huge storage capacity.

Features of Supercomputer:

• They have more than one CPU (Central Processing Unit) that stores instructions and performs arithmetic and logical computations.
• The supercomputer can handle extraordinarily fast CPU computing speeds..
• Supercomputers were first used in national security, nuclear weapon design, and cryptography applications.

Application of Supercomputer: 

• Supercomputers are used to detect various diseases and aid in the production of excellent results in strokes, brain traumas, and other blood flow problems in the body.
• Virtual testing of nuclear explosions and weapon ballistics is made possible with the use of supercomputing.
• Climate trends may be studied and understood using a supercomputer program.

The uses are as follows:

• Supercomputers are used in scientific research fields. In addition, the supercomputers are used for weather forecasting, meteorology, nuclear energy research, and so on. Additionally, they are used to assess developing diseases and anticipate disease behaviour and treatment.
• The military uses supercomputers to test new aircraft, tanks, and missiles. Apart from this, they use them to analyse the effect on soldiers and fights as well as are used to encrypt data.
• Scientists use them to investigate the impacts of nuclear weapon explosions.
• Hollywood uses supercomputers to create animations.
• Supercomputers are used in entertainment for online gaming.
• When a game has a large number of participants, supercomputers assist in stabilising the game’s performance.

Difference between mainframe and supercomputers

• Apart from sheer speed, a major distinction between a supercomputer and a mainframe is that a mainframe serves several users continuously or executes multiple programs concurrently. In contrast, a supercomputer concentrates its resources on performing a few high-performance tasks. 
• Mainframes are primarily used to store and manipulate vast amounts of data, not for computationally heavy activities.
• Highlighting the main difference between mainframe and supercomputers.

Conclusion

Almost everything is done with supercomputers. Clustering numerous high-performance, specialised processors, each geared to execute a certain sort of job, is what transforms a standard computer into a supercomputer. Finely calibrated hardware, a customised network, massive quantities of storage, and so on are all common components of this optimization. Web service hosting, app hosting, and basic commercial computing are not carried out on supercomputers.