Hello friends, today in this article we will know What is Supercomputer, how does it works & what are the features of supercomputer? If you do not know about this then in this post you will get to know all about supercomputers. You will not need to go anywhere else.
Nowadays, everyone has a computer and has basic knowledge about computers. Most of them must have heard the name of supercomputers. The super word shows how powerful this computer will be. So, without delay know the top 5 Supercomputers in the world & important features of supercomputer.
What is a Supercomputer?
Supercomputers are larger in size than all other normal computers. Its processing speed is also much higher than all the others. So, it can process and execute a lot of work in a matter of seconds.
The Supercomputer also works with parallel processing technology. Moreover, its performance and speed are measured by FLOPS (floating-point operations per second). For this reason, it is capable of processing multiple tasks at a time.
Supercomputers cannot be used everywhere, because it is huge and expensive in size and price. Therefore, it is used in research centres, nuclear weapons design, and places like the National Security Agency. However, the supercomputer manages to handle the big data at that place and process it.
How does a Supercomputer work?
A supercomputer works just like a normal computer. In this also, tasks are input in the same way as input is given in a normal computer. Which this computer processes rapidly and gives output. Since this supercomputer has more than a thousand processors, it can complete any task very quickly.
The storage capacity of supercomputers is also very high. In this, millions of instructions are processed and executed. All those data are kept in storage for future use.
Which operating system is used in Supercomputer?
The normal operating system is put in whatever computer or laptop we use. For example, Mac OS is used in Apple’s products, Windows operating system is used in normal computers and laptops. Similarly, the operating system is also used in supercomputers.
The most important thing is that when the first supercomputer came, an operating system called Unix was used in it. As technology progressed, the work of supercomputers also increased.
Today, Linux is used in supercomputers. Which is an open-source operating system. A supercomputer usually performs research and scientific work. Therefore, many programming languages are also used in it.
Which is the first supercomputer in the world?
In the 1920s, the name of the supercomputer was introduced in the world. However, in 1964, this person named Seymour Cray developed the first supercomputer for the Control Data Corporation. Which was named CDC 6600. This supercomputer had the capacity to process millions of instructions at a time. It was the fastest supercomputer of that time.
Top 5 Supercomputers in World
There are so many supercomputers in the world. Nowadays, all the countries are making their supercomputers to keep themselves ahead in technology. The details of the top 5 supercomputers in the world are described below.
FUGAKU
The FUGAKU supercomputer was created by Fujitsu. It was established at RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe, Japan. It gave 442 PETAFLOPS results in HPL by using additional hardware in it. This result is considered a world record.
A64FX 48C 2.2GHz processor is used in this supercomputer. It uses the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. Its storage unit is 5,087,232 GB.
IBM Summit
The Summit supercomputer was built by IBM at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee US. It was launched in the year 2018. Its performance result is 148 PETAFLOPS.
This supercomputer uses 2 IBM POWER9™ 9,216 CPUs and 6 NVIDIA Volta™ 27,648 GPU processors. It uses the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7.4 operating system.
Sierra
The Sierra was built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, US. Its performance is 94.6 PETAFLOPS. Moreover, there are 4320 nodes in it. It uses 2 Power 9 CPUs and 4 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU processors.
Sunway TaihuLight
This has been built in China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology. After that, it was installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. It achieved 93 PETAFLOPS. Sunway SW26010 processors are used in this machine.
Selene
This was made by America, it has been installed in the NVIDIA Corporation House. After upgrading to the Selene supercomputer, it achieved 63.4 PETAFLOPS on HPL. In this, AMD EPYC 7742 64C 2.25GHz processor has been used. The operating system used in it is Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS.
Examples of Supercomputers in India
The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) in India’s first supercomputer PARAM 8000 in 1991.
Example of Supercomputers:
- PARAM Siddhi-AI
- Pratyush
- Mihir
- Sahasrat
- Aaditya
- Color Blossom
- PARAM YUVA-II
- PADUM
- VIRGO
- PARAM Shivay
Features of Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a high-performance computer machine. They are designed to handle complex calculations and process huge amounts of data. Due to having many features in them, it is different from the rest of the computer. Let us know about some important features of supercomputer.
High Processing Power
Supercomputers allow for parallel processing by being built with multiple processors. It can perform trillions of calculations per second. FLOPS, or floating point operations per second, are used to measure this calculation. This enables them to deal with computationally intensive tasks and simulations.
Massive Data Storage
Supercomputers have massive storage capacities to capable of processing and storing vast amounts of data. It uses high-speed storage systems such as hard disk drives (HDD), solid-state drives (SSD), and sometimes specialized storage technologies such as parallel file systems.
Large Memory Capacity
Random access memory plays an important role in supercomputers processing huge amounts of data. The large memory capacity ensures efficient data access and reduces the need for frequent data transfers between memory and storage.
High-Speed Interconnects
Supercomputers facilitate communication and data transfer between different computing nodes. This enables efficient parallel processing and data exchange between processors. Also, reduces latency and problems.
Specialized Architecture
Supercomputers often have specialized architectures designed for high-performance computing. These may use vector processing units, multiple instruction multiple data (MIMD) architectures, or graphics processing units (GPUs) optimized for parallel computing.
Scalability
These are designed with scalability in mind. They can be expanded by adding more computing nodes or processors to increase their processing power and accommodate growing computational requirements.
Advanced Cooling Systems
Supercomputers generate a lot of heat due to their high processing power and dense component construction. Uses advanced cooling systems including liquid cooling and specialized airflow management to maintain optimum temperature and reduce overheating.
Specialized Software
Supercomputers are typically tuned for optimal performance using specialized software frameworks, libraries, and tools. These include parallel programming models, messaging interfaces, and performance profiling tools.
Scientific and Research Applications
It is mainly used for scientific research, engineering simulation, data analysis and modeling of complex phenomena. It provides us with information in weather forecasting, climate modelling, computational biology, physics simulations and aerospace research
Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency
Due to its high performance, supercomputers are consume large amounts of electricity. However, efforts are made to improve energy efficiency by optimizing power management techniques, hardware design, and using energy-efficient components.
FAQ
What is the fastest supercomputer in the world?
Today, Frontier is named among the fastest supercomputers in the world. This supercomputer has been number one since June 2022. It has 1102 petaflops.
What are the main components of a supercomputer?
The main components of a supercomputer include CPUs or GPUs, RAM, storage devices, interconnect networking components for data exchange, and specialized cooling systems to manage heat generated by high-speed processing.
How fast are supercomputers compared to regular computers?
Supercomputers are much faster than regular computers in terms of processing speed and computational capacity. It can perform billions of calculations per second. Its computation is measured in FLOPS – floating point operations per second.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we have given you complete information about supercomputers, India’s first supercomputer, examples of Supercomputers in India & important features of supercomputers. Hope you have got complete information about a supercomputer and its working principles.
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