


Inspired by a basic theoretical design called a Turing machine,Ī typical modern supercomputer works much more (Since computers first appeared, most have worked by simple, serial processing, The operator can scan and process the items, which is always one at a Which you check out your shopping is entirely determined by how fast Load things onto the belt or how fast you pack them: the speed at Person sitting at a grocery store checkout, picking up items from theĬonveyor belt, running them through the scanner, and then passing Operations that's called serial processing. One thing at a time, so it does things in a distinct series of What's the difference between serial and parallel? An ordinary computer does Instead of doing one thing at a time, it does many things at once. Instead of the serial processing that an ordinary computer uses. In an entirely different way, typically using parallel processing Supercomputer is not simply a fast or very large computer: it works Processes it, and then generates some kind of output (result). Takes in information (data) by a process called input, stores and

Picture courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, published on Flickr in 2018 The world's most powerful machine is Fugaku, a Japanese computer with 7,630,848 cores. Second most powerful machine (and the fastest in the United States) with some 2,414,592 processor cores. At the time of writing in July 2021, it's the world's Summit, a scientific supercomputer based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. What makes supercomputers different from the machine you're using It full of those same chips? What you get is a supercomputer-aĬomputer that's millions of times faster than a desktop PC andĬapable of crunching the world's most complex scientific problems. So what if you build a room-sized computer today and fill Smallest computer in the world was a gargantuan machine that filled aĬomputers could pack the same power into microchips as big as yourįingernail. Roll back time a half-century or so and the
