Supercomputers are the most powerful computers in the world capable of performing trillions of calculations per second. They use parallel processing, which splits problems into pieces to be solved simultaneously by thousands of processors. While early supercomputers were single, massive machines, modern supercomputers often consist of clusters of networked computers working together. Supercomputers are used for advanced scientific and engineering applications like weather modeling, nuclear research, and animations that regular computers cannot handle due to their immense processing power needs.

1. ❏ SUPERCOMPUTERS:-
❏ BY:-SIDDHI PANDEY
❏ 22MBI20021
❏ SUBMITTED TO:-DR.ASHWINI SIR

2. ● A supercomputer is the fastest computer in the world that can
process a significant amount of data very quickly. The computing
Performance of a “supercomputer” is measured very high as
compared to a general purpose computer. The computing
Performance of a supercomputer is measured in FLOPS (that is
floating-point operations per second) instead of MIPS. The
supercomputer consists of tens of thousands of processors which can
perform billions and trillions of calculations per second, or you can
say that supercomputers can deliver up to nearly a hundred
quadrillions of FLOPS.

3. ❖ They have evolved from grid to cluster system
of massively parallel computing. Cluster
system computing means that machine uses
multiple processors in one system instead of
arrays of separate computers in a network.
❖ These computers are most massive
concerning size. A most powerful
supercomputer can occupy few feet to
hundreds of feet. The supercomputer
price is very high, and they can vary from
2 lakh dollar to over 100 million dollars.

4. ❖ Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and developed by
Seymour Cray with the Atlas at the University of Manchester. The
Cray designed CDC 1604 which was the first supercomputer in the
world, and it replaces vacuum tube with transistors.
❖ The fastest supercomputer in the world was the Sunway TaihuLight,
in the city of Wixu in China which is developed by China’s National
Research center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology
(NRCPC), maintains its number 1 ranking for the first time, with a
High-Performance Linpack(HPL) mark of 93.01 peta flops.

6. ❏ WORKING OF SUPERCOMPUTERS
A supercomputer is not simply a fast or very large computer: it works in
an entirely different way, typically using parallel processing instead of
the serial processing that an ordinary computer uses. Instead of doing
one thing at a time, it does many things at once.
❖ Serial and parallel processing
What's the difference between serial and parallel? An ordinary computer does one
thing at a time, so it does things in a distinct series of operations; that's called serial
processing. It's a bit like a person sitting at a grocery store checkout, picking up
items from the conveyor belt, running them through the scanner, and then passing
them on for you to pack in your bags. It doesn't matter how fast you load things onto
the belt or how fast you pack them: the speed at which you check out your shopping
is entirely determined by how fast the operator can scan and process the items,
which is always one at a time. (Since computers first appeared, most have worked by
simple, serial processing, inspired by a basic theoretical design called a Turing
machine, originally conceived by Alan Turing.)

7. ● A typical modern supercomputer works much
more quickly by splitting problems into
pieces and working on many pieces at once,
which is called parallel processing. It's like
arriving at the checkout with a giant cart full
of items, but then splitting your items up
between several different friends. Each friend
can go through a separate checkout with a
few of the items and pay separately. Once
you've all paid, you can get together again,
load up the cart, and leave. The more items
there are and the more friends you have, the
faster it gets to do things by parallel
processing—at least, in theory. Parallel
processing is more like what happens in our
brains.

8. Serial and parallel processing: Top: In serial processing, a problem is tackled one step at a
time by a single processor. It doesn't matter how fast different parts of the computer are (such
as the input/output or memory), the job still gets done at the speed of the central processor in
the middle. Bottom: In parallel processing, problems are broken up into components, each of
which is handled by a separate processor. Since the processors are working in parallel, the
problem is usually tackled more quickly even if the processors work at the same speed as the
one in a serial system.

9. Who has the most supercomputers? About three quarters of the world's 500 most powerful machines can be
found in just five countries: China (37.6%), the USA (24.4%), Japan (6.8%), Germany (4.6%), and France (3.2%).
For each country, the lightest block (on the left) shows its total number of supercomputers in 2017, the middle
blocks show 2018, and 2020, and the darkest block (on the right, with a bold number in red above) shows the
current figure for June 2021. Although China has the most machines by far, the aggregate performance of the
US machines is significantly higher (almost twice as high, according to TOP500's analysis).

10. ❖ You might be surprised to discover that most supercomputers
run fairly ordinary operating systems much like the ones
running on your own PC, although that's less surprising when
we remember that a lot of modern supercomputers are actually
clusters of off-the-shelf computers or workstations. The most
common supercomputer operating system used to be Unix, but
it's now been superseded by Linux (an open-source, Unix-like
operating system originally developed by Linus Torvalds and
thousands of volunteers). Since supercomputers generally
work on scientific problems, their application programs are
sometimes written in traditional scientific programming
languages such as Fortran, as well as popular, more modern
languages such as C and C++.

11. ❏ Characteristics of
Supercomputer
➔ They can support more than a hundred users at
a time.
➔ • These machines are capable of handling the
massive amount of calculations that are beyond
the human capabilities, i.e., the human is unable
to solve such extensive calculations.
➔ • Many individuals can access supercomputers
at the same time.
➔ • These are the most expensive computers that
can ever be made.

12. ❏ Features of Supercomputer
● They have more than 1 CPU (Central Processing Unit) which
contains instructions so that it can interpret instructions and
execute arithmetic and logical operations.
● • The supercomputer can support extremely high computation
speed of CPUs.
● • They can operate on pairs of lists of numbers instead of pairs
of numbers.
● • They were used initially in applications related to national
security, nuclear weapon design, and cryptography. But
nowadays they are also employed by the aerospace, automotive
and petroleum industries.

17. ❏ Uses of Supercomputer
➔ Supercomputers are not used for everyday tasks because of their
superiority.
➔ • Supercomputer handles those applications, which required the
real-time processing. The uses are as follows:
➔ • They’re used for scientific simulations and research such as
weather forecasting, meteorology, nuclear energy research,
physics, and chemistry, as well as for extremely complex animated
graphics. They are also used to interpret new diseases and predict
illness behavior and treatment.

18. • Scientists use them to test the impact of nuclear weapon
detonation.
• Hollywood uses supercomputers for the creation of
animations.
• In entertainment, supercomputers are used for online
gaming.
Supercomputers help in stabilizing the game performance
when a lot of users are playing the game.