What Is a Supercomputer?

Computers are incredible machines. But what happens when you essentially network thousands of computers together? You create a sort of supercomputer that drastically increases the amount of computing power and processing speed.

In this week’s episode, I’ll be discussing these supercomputers, how they work, and exactly what they’re used for..

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Supercomputer!

Last week, I talked about how meteorologists predict the weather. That involved a lot of talk about extremely fast and powerful computers, known as supercomputers. Well, supercomputers are not that different from your desktop or laptop computer. They contain all of the normal components—hard drives, memory, and processors.

However, supercomputers are different because they contain extremely high-end components and a lot of them. For example, your laptop probably boasts a few gigabytes (GB) of memory, a normal processor, and about a terabyte (TB) of hard drive space.

Now compare that to the Tianhe-2 supercomputer (the fastest in the world as of 2015). This supercomputer contains 1,375TB of memory, 80,000 processors with a total of 3.12 million cores, and 12,400TB or 12.4 petabytes (PB) of hard drive space.

See also: How to Extend the Life of Your Hard Drive

As you can see, the Tianhe-2 supercomputer dwarfs your laptop in every specification.

Supercomputers are mostly measured by their processing speed, which is calculated in FLOPS (FLoating-point Operations Per Second). This measures how many operations a supercomputer can perform per second.

If you were to measure a standard laptop computer in FLOPS, it would generally fall within a range of 2-8 Giga-FLOPS. That’s 2-8 billion FLOPS. Sounds like a lot!

That pales in comparison to the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which has 33.86 Peta-FLOPS. That’s roughly 15 million times faster than the laptop!

While supercomputers can vary in the type of operating systems they use, they mostly employ customized versions of the Linux operating system.

What Are Supercomputers Used For?

Now, these supercomputers cost millions of dollars to build and take up a lot of room. I’m talking floors of entire buildings, with racks upon racks of components, all networked together.

They also consume a ton of electricity. Our friend the Tianhe-2 uses 24 megawatts (MW) of power. To put that in perspective, if you ran the Tianhe-2 for one hour, it would equal the electricity usage of 25 residential homes for an entire month! That’s a ton of juice!

You’re probably thinking, “OK, Tech Talker, we get it. These are giant, super-fast computers. So what?”

Well, given the cost and size of these supercomputers, they must be doing something pretty important, right?

As I mentioned last week, weather forecasts are based upon supercomputer modeling. All of the computing behind that 5 day forecast on your phone was likely done using a supercomputer to predict the weather patterns. That’s because the computer simulation has to process a ton of data to predict what’s going to happen next.

In the same way that these supercomputers model weather patterns, they also model patterns in space. Scientists use supercomputers to simulate how galaxies interact with one another and how the universe may have formed after the Big Bang. This type of simulation takes a massive amount of computing power to calculate what is needed to relate mass to gravity and time.

Supercomputers are also used to simulate physics experiments that might be too dangerous or expensive to actually conduct. The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons, but how do they know the weapons’ condition without testing one every now and then?

Well, they simulate it using a supercomputer, of course. They collect measurements of the weaponized material, and then use supercomputers to crunch the numbers and simulate how the nuclear weapon will operate.

It’s pretty fantastic to think that we can test material from a nuclear weapon to determine how it will operate should it ever have to be used, even after decades of storage.

Far From Elementary, My Dear Watson

The weather, universe, and our nuclear weapon stockpile are pretty important things that merit the use of a supercomputer.

But did you know that supercomputers are also used for entertainment?

In 1997, IBM created the supercomputer Deep Blue to play chess against world chess champion, Gary Kasparov. Deep Blue won the 6-game match 2 to 1, with 3 draws.

Fast-forward to 2013, to when IBM created Watson, a supercomputer designed to compete on the game show, Jeopardy. Incredibly, Watson was not connected to the internet. It had to understand the questions, search its hard drives, sound the buzzer, and answer. Despite being asked to perform the tasks of its human counterparts, Watson defeated 2 human Jeopardy champions!

Did you know that the popular online game, World of Warcraft, uses supercomputers to help generate its 3D fantasy world?

See also; The Science of Minecraft (Part 1): Smelting Ore

Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, uses supercomputers to generate game graphics and calculate the in-game physics of the fantasy world. One of their supercomputers is capable of hosting over a million players at a single time!

Supercomputers are pretty awesome and their amazing computing capabilities affect our everyday lives. So the next time you check the weather, just remember the supercomputers behind that 5-day forecast!

Well, that’s it for today! Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at quickanddirtytips techtalker. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on Facebook QDTtechtalker.

Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!

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