Super Computers

1
Super Computers

• By Phuong Vo

2
What is a Supercomputer?

• Supercomputer is a broad term for one of
• the fastest computer currently available.
• Super computers were designed and built
• to work on extremely large jobs that could
• not be handled by no other types of
• computing systems.

3
What is a Supercomputer? (contd)

• Supercomputers speed are measured in
• floating point operations per second
• (FLOPS) in units of
• megaflops (MFOPS)
• gigaflops (GFLOPS)
• teraflops (TFLOPS)

4
What are Supercomputers Used For?

• scientific simulations
• animated graphics
• analysis of geological data
• nuclear energy research and meteorology
• computational fluid dynamics

5
Early History Supercomputer.

• Seymour Clay made the first transistorized
  computer (CDC 1604) in 1964.
• In 1965 Cray developed CDC 6600, the first
  multithreading computer. Cray then developed the
  CDC 7600 in 1970.
• Cray-1 supercomputers project started in 1972 and
  finished in 1974 and was twice as fast as the
  7600 with a vector speed of 80 MFLOPS.

6
Early History of Supercomputer. (contd)

• In 1990 Cray successful build Cray-4 the fastest
  supercomputer in the world at around 10 gigaflops
  and was smaller than a human brain.
• Cray died on October 5th 1996 at the age of 71 as
  a result of injuries sustained in an automobile
  accident.
• Currently the fastest computer is
• IBM BlueGene/L at around 73
• teraflops (TFLOPS)

7
Parallel Processing

• Two common type used in supercomputers.
• Cluster
• Multi-Processor

8
Cluster Computers

• Cluster computers are two or more
• computers working parallel to achieve
• greater performances. Cluster computers
• breakup work among the computers in the
• cluster.

9
Cluster Computers (contd)

• Each computer in the cluster is a cpu itself with
  its own processor, memory, and disk.
• The computers communicate with each other via an
  interconnecting bus.

10
Xbox Cluster

• www.anandtech.com
• successfully built a
• XBOX Linux cluster
• consisting of 8 XBOXs.
• XBOX specs
• PIII 733MHz 128K L2
• Seagate 5400RPM 8GB
• 64MB Shared PC3200

11
Xbox Cluster (contd)
Performance Benchmarks
Distributed Compiling
Distributed Rendering
12
Multi-Processor

• A multi-processor computer has 2 or more
• cpus. Each processor is capable of running
• different program simultaneously (true
• multitasking).

13
Multi-Processor (contd)

• The cpus all shared the other parts of the
  computers memory, disk system, bus, etc.
• Cpu communicate via memory and the system bus.
• Cheaper than cluster computers but does not
  perform as well.

14
Advantages of Parallel Processing

• Costs are much cheaper than building one
  supercomputer.
• Highly scalable.

15
Disadvantages of parallel processing.

• High overload it is difficult to make many
  processor work together efficiently.
• It is difficult to write programs to utilize
  multiple processors at once in an efficient
  manner.

16
References

• www.anandtech.com
• http//ei.cs.vt.edu/history/SUPERCOM.Calle.HTML
• http//www.cs.sjsu.edu/lee/cs147/Super20Computer
  s20---Parallel20Computers.ppt