Supercomputers
SHOULD YOU NEED to do something a little more complex than writing a text document – such as forecasting the weather or decoding the secrets of the human genome – then your average desktop computer is simply not going to be good enough. It’s in that space where the supercomputer comes into its own.
A supercomputer is a special breed of computer designed typically for a specific set of tasks. Some are built to run weather simulations – some of the earliest supercomputers were built for that task – and others were built to simulate nuclear explosions and others for genetic research.
The concept is that while a desktop PC is designed to perform a variety of tasks and tackle different things at a time, a supercomputer is built and tuned to perform a single function. An example is the new RoadRunner supercomputer the US Department of Energy is using to run simulations that calculate the safety of its stockpile of nuclear weapons. This system is twice as fast as anything else on the planet and capable of 1,026 quadrillion calculations/second, according to reports.
Of course these supercomputers have much longer lifespans than the average PC.
The next system on the list of top performers has held top spot since November 2004 and is unlikely to be retired soon. While they’re the fastest computers on the planet they aren’t likely to be used to publish the next riveting blog post from someone you have never heard of.
Finweek
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