10 of the Coolest and Most Powerful Supercomputers of All Time

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As we know that supercomputers are the better version of any simpler computer. The performance of the supercomputer is much better than any other computer. In this time of the world, supercomputers are important and necessary things in human life. The most popular answer to the question is what is supercomputers that are computer program which makes human life simpler with their performance.As we know that there are many powerful supercomputers made for the necessity of humans. You can also measure the performance of the supercomputers by using the floating-point operations per second. You can also call this measuring unit FLOPS.

Several powerful supercomputers in the world are made on the based of Linux operating system. This operating system is used since 2017 in all the supercomputers. Many countries are researching for more powerful and superior supercomputers. Supercomputers are multi-functional and they have an important role in science. Computational science is one of the great fields in which you can use this supercomputer. You can use supercomputers in many fields like quantum mechanics, weather forecasting, climate research, weather forecasting, etc.

As we know that the most powerfulsupercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and after that, the supercomputers developed their operating system from time to time. The updated supercomputers were made by the Seymour Cray in Control Data Corporation. After that many updateswere taking place in the operating system and many parallels were added.Many more such companies are researching supercomputers and their program. Technological companies in Japan made an update on supercomputers in the 1970s and 80s. China also did much research and progress in this field. Cray-1 is one of the successful and massive examples of powerful supercomputers.

From the decades, supercomputers are helping scientist to perform and solve the hard equations which are not possible on the simple computer. At that time, supercomputers are one of the biggest help to scientists to progress their experiments or equation. Because of the supercomputers, progress in technology and science is taken place. From that time there are many updates are also taken place in supercomputers to make it more superior. Following are some Top 10 supercomputers which are completing an important and necessary part in human lives. All the following computers are one of the powerful computers in the world.

Top 10 coolest and powerful supercomputers:-

All of the following supercomputers names are superior to the older version of themselves. They have inserted many updates on the computer. The updates will help in the performance of computers and it will also make your life easier. The update will make these computers more powerful. All these supercomputers are great in their way and they are different from each other. They all have a different operating system and a great programwhich will manage the computer well. There are also some massive examples of supercomputers that are successful and powerful.

Cray-1:

Cray-1 is the oldest and successful supercomputer of all time. Cray-1 is the first computer of the cray and it was made by the team lead bySeymour Cray himself. Seymour cray is one of the great minds of the science world. Cray-1 is introduced in 1976 and it is manufactured by the cray research in the Los Alamos national laboratory. Cray-1 is one of the most successful and superior supercomputers inhistory.It is known for its great shape and structure. It is a c-shaped cylinder and ahalf-ringaround the bottom of the cylinder. After the announcement of the Cray-1 around 100 supercomputers were sold at that time.

Features

The weight of this supercomputer was around 5.5 tons and the power was around 115kW. The operating system in the cray-1 was UNICOS and COS. It also has a 64-bit processor. The memory of the Cray-1 was 8.39 megabytes and the storage of this computer was 303 megabytes. The Cray X-MP successor is used in the Cray-1 supercomputers.This was the successful use of the vector processor for the first time. This was a successful and massive example of the superior implementation of the supercomputers. This example describes the proper explanation for the question which is what is supercomputers.

Cray-2:

Cray-2 is also designed and manufactured by cray research. This supercomputer is the updated version cray-1 model. The manufacture date of the model is announced in 1985 by the cray research. At that time this was one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. This supercomputer was better than the Cray X-MP. After some time the place of this supercomputer was taken place by Cray Y-MP. This is the first supercomputer with four-vector processors. This is one of the massive and successful examples of supercomputers with many CPUs.

Features

The performance of this supercomputer is around 1.9 gigaflops. It also has a 64-bit system and 2 GB RAM which is great at that time. Therefore, it is known as the fastest computer at that time. To cool the circuits they also add electrically insulating liquid fluorine. This is one of the special characters of this supercomputer. It also has a heat exchanger water tank which is come with a cooling circuit. At that time this supercomputer is also called by a nickname which is ‘bubbles’. This supercomputer is used in many fields like nuclear weapons and oceanography.

The connection machine 5:

The connection machine is also known as CM-5 which is the result of doctoral research. This is one of the supercomputers which has a massively placed series of supercomputers in parallel. The manufacturing of this machine was started in the early 1980s by MIT. Initially, it is made for the application of symbolic processing and artificial intelligence. After some time, it was used in the computational science field as a successful example.Many systems are present in this CM-5 program. One of the famous systems is FROSTBURG. It is installed in the US national security agency from 1991 to 1997.

Features –

This supercomputer was known for its unique structure and many other qualities like storage and processors. Initially, this computer is delivered with 256 processing nodes but after time assess they change or upgraded it to 512 nodes in 1993. It also has 2TB RAM which will help this machine to work faster. They used SPARC RISC processors in this supercomputer and this supercomputer also has a great peak performance up to 65.5 gigaflops. This supercomputer is also used in the movie called Jurassic Park.Because of its lightning panel, it is also used fordiagnosis purposes.

Fujitsu numerical wind tunnel:

Fujitsu is one of the best company which develop and manufacture the best supercomputers in the world. It also develops the supercomputer name as a numerical wind tunnel. In the formation of this supercomputer, Japan National Aerospace Laboratory helped Fujitsu. As we see the name, this supercomputer is used to boost the air turbulence on the aircraft and it also helps in forecasting the weather. Because of its special qualities, at that time it was popular and fastest among all the supercomputers.

Features-

Initially, this supercomputer is announced in 1993 by Fujitsu. It has a great peak performance of around 124.5 gigaflops which makes this computer the fastest computer at that time.It also has multiple processors which help to store memory. Each processor contains256 MB central memory. This was one of the popular and fastest supercomputers in the world which breaks the 100 gigaflops barrier in the first attempt. After some time, they upgraded the number of processors in the system and therefore the performance of the supercomputer is increased to 170 gigaflops.

ASCI Red:

This was one of the popular and fastest supercomputers in the world at that time. It has the best qualities and upgrades for better performance. The manufacturing and design are made by the collaboration between Intel and Sandia labs. This supercomputer was one of the fastest computers from 1997 to 2000. ASCI red was the first computer manufactured by this collaboration. Initially, this computer is made by the Pentium pro processors but after some, it gets upgraded to Pentium-2. The upgraded system can operate at 333MHz. This supercomputer was the first computer that used and breaks the teraflops barriers. They manufactured many pieces of this computer and sold it ata great price.

Features –

As we saw above, in this system they use the Pentium-2 processors. It also has 4,510 compute nodes which makes this machine easy to use. This supercomputer also has a total of 1,212GB of RAM and 12.5TB of disk storage which makes this computer real fast. You all should know that the ASCI stands for the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. This computer was also used in some nuclear testing by the U.S government. The structure of this computer is big and it contains around 104 cabinets in it.

ASCI White:

After the ASCI red get older and diminished ASCI White takes the place of this fastest computer. Because of this supercomputer, the reputation of manufacturing companies remains the same. They also make some upgrades in the system which will help people understand it easily. From 2000 to 2002, this supercomputer was known as the fastest supercomputer in the world. As we saw that the name of this computer is similar to the ASCI red but it is completely different from it. As we all know that the ASCI Red is manufactured by Intel but this supercomputer is completely based on IBM’s.

Features –

In this supercomputer, many changes are present compared to ASCI Red supercomputer. In this supercomputer, they used 8,192 POWER3 processors which have theperformance or it operates at 375MHz. It also has 6TB of RAM and 160TB of disk storage which makes this supercomputer more superior and powerful. Because of the high RAM, this computer was one of the fastest computers in the world. It can also contain more than 12.3 teraflops. After the great sale of these computers, it gets decommissioned in 2006.

Earth stimulator:

The earth stimulator is one of the great supercomputers of all time. This was known as the fastest computer in between 2002- 2004. The earth stimulator was built in1997 by the NEC. This supercomputer is built for a special purpose or the for use in different fields like Japan aerospace exploration agency, the Japan atomic research institute, and the Japan marina sconce and technology center. At that time, this supercomputer was used in several fields bequest of its easy working system. It was also used globally for the climate stimulations for the atmosphere and oceans. This was a great working device at that time. The architecture of this supercomputer was also made by the NEC.

Features-

In the earth stimulator, there were 5120 processors was present at that time. It also has 10TB of RAN and 700TB of disk storage which makes this computer the fastest of all computers in that time. You can also add mass storage in tape drives in this supercomputer. It also has two nodes, each of the nodes consume 20kW of power.Initially, when they build this supercomputer the performance of this system has to be 40 teraflops but they can achieve 35.86 teraflops. They also upgraded this system and in some areas, many people still use this computer.

Blue gene:

Blue gene is completely based on the IBM system. IBM produced the family of supercomputers at that time. The blue gene supercomputer was used to simulate biochemical processes that also involve proteins. This blue gene supercomputer was manufactured in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and this computer was one of the fastest computers between 2004-2008. In 2008, IBM also launched a new project known as Roadrunner. Blue gene was one of the superior and powerful supercomputers in the world.

Features-

As we see the structure and the performance of the blue gene, we surely can call these piecessuperior. The design of the model was also great. It has 131,072 IBM PowerPC processors that operateat 700MHz. It also has 49.1TB of RAM and 1.89PB of disk storage which makes this supercomputer the fastest of all. It also has a theoretical peak performance of up to 365 teraflops. After some time, they upgraded the version of this blue gene and the peak performance of the computer also increased up to 596 teraflops. This is one of the biggest achievementsof the blue gene system till that time. They also gain some reputation for their company at that time.

Jaguar:

Jaguar is one of the fastest and popular supercomputers of all time. At that time, there are many supercomputers are fighting for their place in the market but after the launching of the jaguar, the manufacturing company of the jaguar takes the place in the market. The company of the Jaguar is located at the oak ridge national laboratory. This is one of the cray’s designs and it was capable of containing 1.64 petaflops. The Jaguar has gone through many experiments. In this supercomputer, they used several techniques for better performance.

Features-

In this supercomputer, they used Cray’s XT4 and XT5 architecture with the AMD Opteron processors which are quad-core. It also has more than 180000 processors. It also has 362TB RAM and 10PB of disk storage which will make this computer more powerful and more superior. It also possesses 284 cabinets and an XT5 section. This separate section was late as a basketball court. In 2008, this supercomputer was the second-fastest supercomputer in the world. At that time, it has only around 1 petaflop peak performance.

IBM Roadrunner:

This was one of the successful projects of IBM and it was completely based on IBM’s system. IBM roadrunner was announced after the blue gene project of IBM. It took the place of the blue gene supercomputer at that time. The basic mission of this computer what to reach the performance of 1.7 petaflops. After the achievement, it became the popular and fastest supercomputer in the world of that time. It was the first computer that keeps the constant performance of 1 petaflop at that time.

Features-

IBM roadrunner had 12,960 IBM PowerXcell 8i processors which operate at 3.2 GHz and it also had 6,480 dual-core AMD Opteron processors which operate at 1.8 GHz.The combination of these processors comes to the result of 130,464 processor cores. It also has more than 100TB RAM and 296 racks. All these systems occupied 6000 square feet at the Los Angeles national laboratory in New Mexico. After some time of successful business, this project had to shut down in 2013 because of the low energy efficiency. In 2019, they also launched summit and sierra as the fastest supercomputers of all time. They have a great storage capacity and they can do a better performance than other supercomputers.

The Bottom Line

All this above information is really important and necessary for you to understand what is a supercomputer. All the above information explains all the features of the supercomputer and why they are known as the Top 10 supercomputers of all time. All the above supercomputers are the coolest and powerful supercomputers in the world. Through all these years they maintain their position in the market and gain a reputation for their company. All these are massive and successful example supercomputers.

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