15 replies to this topic

[retry56]

Does anyone knows what Supercomputer looks like?
Is it a server or a full featured computer?

anyone knows?

[The Simpleton]

I'll try my best to define this....A supercomputer is an extremely powerful computing system which is mostly used to process a lot of data in very little time. Frankly I never thought about what this "data" is, and what's the need for processing it so fast! Supercomputers can perform millions, billions or even trillions of operations in a second (based on their speed and power). And they're not exactly pretty to look at. A single supercomputer may fill up an entire room or even a building! If I'm not wrong, they are mostly used for research purposes and the common man doesn't have any real use with the supercomputer in his daily life....

Check out good old wikipedia for more info on supercomputers

[rvalkass]

This is the supercomputer here in the Physics department at my University:



They're generally hundreds or thousands of CPUs working in parallel to complete often repetitive or complex tasks and simulations. For example, that supercomputer has 420 quad-core processors, mostly running at 2.83GHz, with 2.5TB of RAM and 47TB of hard drive storage. And, of course, it runs Linux

[mahesh2k]

@rvalkass, thanks for screen-shot. Which university is this by the way ?

@Topic, you can find more about supercomputer here. And if you want to know about quantum computing then this PDF will help. (To know from this PDF, you need to have some background about computing). Also to know about quantum algorithm you can find information in this paper.

[rvalkass]

mahesh2k, on Nov 1 2009, 03:50 PM, said:

@rvalkass, thanks for screen-shot. Which university is this by the way ?

The University of Exeter, UK: http://www.ex.ac.uk/

I'm currently studying Physics: http://newton.ex.ac.uk/

Also, for some reason, the supercomputer (called 'Zen') gets its own homepage http://hpc.ex.ac.uk/

[buxgoddess]

I prefer to give a twisted answer for this question as I know that everyone else will give a scientific definition for it.

Wonder if I call a computer which does superficial things a super computer. That is it does nothing but all rubbish that a bow intellectual IQ person will easily be able to perform.

What if the computer does supernatural things like acting GOD and bringing goodness and prosperity to the needy. May be teleport you to the moon and back in a flash and you make a great outing for dinner in the moon. It acts as a UFO to the beings living some 3000 light years away and comes back after a days travel that far with some valuable information for NASA's secret mission to send Obama for excursion to outer space. Well Obama will of-course fund such projects as much as possible because after all this kind of projects are for his personal interest as well.

[mahesh2k]

Quote

What if the computer does supernatural things like acting GOD and bringing goodness and prosperity to the needy.

Lol no chance. Have you seen echelon conspiracy movie recently ?

[rob86]

The most super supercomputers are meant for calculating the meaning of life. This has been attempted before and I myself have learned the meaning of life from these calculations and you could know the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything, as well. Unfortunately, you're not going to like it.

[weberk]

rob86, on Nov 2 2009, 04:02 AM, said:

The most super supercomputers are meant for calculating the meaning of life. This has been attempted before and I myself have learned the meaning of life from these calculations and you could know the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything, as well. Unfortunately, you're not going to like it.

Did this come from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? The answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42.

Type this sentence in a Google search bar " the answer to life, the universe and everything " and hit enter. It's actually a Google hack.

[Watermonkey]

A couple interesting tidbits gleaned by visiting the top500 site: The most powerful supercomputer in the world, outside of NSA, is a IBM using an advanced version of the same processor used in the Sony Playstation 3! The computer achieved a staggering 1.026 Petaflop/s speed and is being used by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The 2nd fastest computer in the world is less than half as fast! One way to build your own supercomputer would be to find cooled racks like those pictured above and fill the racks with Apple servers. Each server can contain 2 quad-core Xeon "Nehelam" Intel processors, 3Gb (minimum) memory, 3 1Tb hard drives, dual 750W power supplies and much much more for about $7k each. Throw about 20 of those in a cabinet along with a few racks of RAID arrays and you've got yourself a supercomputer running at probably over 100 Teraflop/s. And if you order that many, Apple would probably be happy to give you a good discount and lots of support in return for good publicity.