what are the functions of super computers?
Answers
Supercomputers play an important role in the field of computational science, and are used for a wide range of computationally intensive tasks in various fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), and physical simulations (such as simulations of the early moments of the universe, airplane and spacecraft aerodynamics, the detonation of nuclear weapons, and nuclear fusion). Throughout their history, they have been essential in the field of cryptanalysis.[6]
Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s, and for several decades the fastest were made by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), Cray Research and subsequent companies bearing his name or monogram. The first such machines were highly tuned conventional designs that ran faster than their more general-purpose contemporaries. Through the 1960s, they began to add increasing amounts of parallelism with one to four processors being typical. From the 1970s, the vector computing concept with specialized math units operating on large arrays of data came to dominate. A notable example is the highly successful Cray-1 of 1976. Vector computers remained the dominant design into the 1990s. From then until today, massively parallel supercomputers with tens of thousands of off-the-shelf processors became the norm.[7][8]
The US has long been a leader in the supercomputer field, first through Cray's almost uninterrupted dominance of the field, and later through a variety of technology companies. Japan made major strides in the field in the 1980s and 90s, but since then China has become increasingly active in the field. As of June 2018, the fastest supercomputer on the TOP500 supercomputer list is the Summit, in the United States, with a LINPACK benchmark score of 122.3 PFLOPS, exceeding the previous record holder, Sunway TaihuLight, by around 29 PFLOPS.[3][9] Sunway TaihuLight's is notable for its use of indigenous chips and is the first Chinese computer to enter the TOP500 list without using hardware from the United States. As of June 2018, China had more computers (206) on the TOP500 list than the United States (124); however, US built computers held eight of the top 20 positions;[10][11] the U.S. has six of the top 10 and China has two.
Answer:
A supercomputer exists as a computer with an increased level of performance compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point functions per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS).
Explanation:
Supercomputers play an essential role in the field of computational science and are utilized for a wide range of computationally intensive assignments in different fields, including quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, weather research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modeling (computing the networks and properties of …chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), and physical simulations (such as simulations of the earlier points of the universe, airplane and spacecraft aerodynamics, the detonation of nuclear weapons, and nuclear fusion). Throughout their history, they have been important in the field of cryptanalysis.
Main features of a supercomputer
- A vast number of processing units.
- An immense collection of RAM-type memory units
- High-speed interconnect between nodes
- High input/output and file systems speeds
- Custom software and specialized support
- Effective thermal management
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