rontol Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 I wonder what are 'supercomputer' actually ???I've read many countries around the world trying very hard to create the world no 1 supercomputerIt's that important those supercomputer ??? *sorry for my silly english* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Just like all technologies, a "Supercomputer" is a moving target. Todya's laptops are more powerful than the early supercomputers. Perhaps "Supercomputer" is best defined by being significantly faster than a Dell or Gateway? :-) Usually these are massive parrallel. They have a large quantity of processors running in parrallel. The rewards of building one are numerous. Usually financial and stability of company. It is a matter of being easier to make millions by selling one of something or millions of them. Dell, Gateway, ... make their money (when and if) by selling quantity of average computers. A few bucks each. Supercomputer companies make their money selling "one offs". Each one sold is individually made based on the technology of each's time. Less or no reduction of cost because of scale and amortization of design and tooling costs. Typically Supercomputers also are based on custom programming for each application. Though this is less true today than originally. In order to take advantage of the parrallel processors and memory, the code had to be written specifically for each usage. But processor and memory awareness and allocation is being written into the OS and the programs can take advantage of it without custom coding. Plus there is a "new paradigm" for "massive parrallel processing" these days. "Distributed processing", where programs (clients) are loaded onto regular PC's in a network. Then when the PC is not being used stand alone, the program takes over and uses the PC's processor to run the code as part of the "massive parrallel computer". This is the concept behind SETI@home. http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ where anyone that visits the internet can load a program on their PC that helps SETI crunch the massive amount of data they have by breaking it into small chunks and passing it around to large numbers of individuals that are willing to donate their free clock cycles. Or the Distributed net RC5-72 project. It is the same concept but is intended to crack security code challenges. Most of our networks are involved with this effort. Some even know it! :-) Of the 4,239 registered teams, we are currently in the top 300. We have run 3,131,202,957,475,840 keys so far with 4,123,168,604,160 keys run yesterday. We are averaging 48,907,928 keys a sec. And that represents processing when the PC's aren't being used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killean Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Supercomputers are systems built to be able to run at extream speeds. Last I heared the fastest supercomputer is BlueGene/L created by IBM. It runs at a massive 71 TerraFlops a second (or 70,720,000,000,000 calculations a second.) Most supercomputers are also running useful proccesses to help in one way or another, such as The Earth Simulator made by a Japanese company. That supercomputer is running weather pattern calculations at 35 TerraFlops a second. Resources:BlueGene/L Website BlueGene/L Specs The Earth Simulator Website(English) The Earth Simulator Specs Top500.org Top 500 Supercomputers Shoot, you beat me to it FT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Shoot, you beat me to it FT. FT is in reality a poster-bot run by the great-great-great-grandson of Deep Blue. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 i know this has been explain by FT and Killean but a supercomputer most of the time is a network of computers interconnected through either hardware or software, that is capable to split the required operation in to parts and send these parts to be processed on multiple computers at the same time and pull the results together to make sense... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 FT is in reality a poster-bot run by the great-great-great-grandson of Deep Blue. :)Your move Garry! :-) Can't sleepHypographyCan't eatHypography.... http://www.hypography.com/scienceforums/showpost.php?p=14032&postcount=15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Your move Garry! :-) Can't sleep Hypography Can't eat Hypography Can't believe Hypography Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 i know this has been explain by FT and Killean but a supercomputer most of the time is a network of computersI would say this is a fairly new def based on distributed networking. The vast majority of Supercomputers are a specific singular physical hardware device. Yes with a large number of processors and various memory schemes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freethinker Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 Can't believe HypographyCan't catch upTormodraphy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted January 4, 2005 Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 there's a knoppix that allows you to create a computer cluster without having to actually having a supercomputer... http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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