Super computers

Last month, a new supercomputer top 500 has been issued.

Thought that your own super PC was a mathematical wonder? well, in supercomputer land its like an embryo compared to the machines that rule out there. the supercomputers are giants compared to the home/office PC. The number one on the list is capable of making a 478.2 Teraflop/s (which means Tera=trillion calculations p/s…) compared to a high end CPU for home users which comes to a 30 Gigaflops a second, this is light speed compared to the speed of sound.

Now don’t go asking your family or PC shop for a supercomputer, the supercomputers are made to do calculations only, so no graphics or other game/video oriented specializations to be found there, maybe with some good programming you could get a super games computer but that would take a lot of time and money. which you could invest in playing with your high end game computer that’s ready for sale right now! So its only for the geeks that wish to calculate the weather systems or flush out that one shiny star in the middle of that big milky way far far away.

If you look at the list, which can be found at top500 the first computer is way beyond the number two in speed… which is nothing compared to the computers lower on the list. IBM is the major investor in supercomputers and builds around 250 of the computers on the list, HP is second with around 150 which leaves 100 more places to be taken by smaller manufacturers.

Technology is progressing fast, it will be a matter of time before the first Petaflop is reached and this will increase the run on technology even more, the run will continue and probably accelerate faster and faster. ten years ago the speed of a supercomputer was almost comparable with the desktop computers today, so in ten years from now everybody will be able to do the maths that are done on a supercomputer today. where will it end?

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