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The Rise of Supercomputers

Updated on February 2, 2011

Larger Than Life, Supercomputers can be Tagged as Fast and Furious.

Almost all of us are now familiar with personal computers, in fact we and even our kids use them everday. Indeed computers in most part of the world are already attached and integrated with our way of life. Here are some of the importance of computers in us: We utilize them in our work and homes performing different tasks like making spreadsheets, pertinent documents, presentations, desktop publishing and more. With computers we can be able to hear music, watch different movies, download any files from music to any data that can be utilize in our research work, play different games and a lot lot more. Truly computers are well-knowned to be versatile and prolific, but there is something that is far more powerful than computers, that is, the superb supercomputers, that can exhibit finesse and pizzaz, in terms of calculating power at a blazing speed and storing huge data. Elusive and rare, supercomputers are many notch better than any other Personal computers available in the world. They are faster and sophisticated as they are packed with enormous features that can make calculations several hundred times better than any current personal computers in our homes. Faster than any other PCs by 100,000 times, supercomputers are very expensive and requires an ample space to house them. One of the most powerful supercomputer and one of the top supercomputer in the world (placed a very strong second in the Top 500 supercomputers) the IBM's Blue Gene Supercomputer /L which has a blazing speed of 136 trillion operations per second or 478.2 Teraflops, a world record, is expected to undergo major upgrades that will enable it to perform twice faster than its already very fast recent predecessor

Photo from newsfactor.com
Photo from newsfactor.com
Teraflops computers. Photo from flickr.com
Teraflops computers. Photo from flickr.com
The bluegene l supercomputer getting wired. Photo from:www.flickr.com/  photos/llnl/  2841635792/
The bluegene l supercomputer getting wired. Photo from:www.flickr.com/ photos/llnl/ 2841635792/

The norm which is used to measure the speed of our PC is in MegaHertz, (A unit of frequency the Hertz which is named in honor of the prolific scientist Heinrich Hertz is equivalent to cycle per second or a complete sinewave in Electronics). In supercomputer, the term "Petaflop," is used to name the unit for speed (but still this is theoretical, so as to speak).Supercomputers operates at the Teraflop range, and thousands of teraflops is needed by a Petaflop. A supercomputer can contain all the output of all Hollywood films that are produced and even all the Books in the US Library of Congress, wow, a truly powerhouse especially with its capability to hold very huge amount of data.

The Japanese unveiled its Earth Stimulator in 2002, which is tapped to make weather predictions, track sea temperatures globally, rainfalls, and to oversee natural disasters in the years or even few centuries ahead.

Supercomputers are utilized in commercial drug manufacturer firms, to determine the long term effects of their products to humans. Supercomputers may also open the possiblity of discovering new treatments for various ailments. In tire making industry, Michelin now create new better tires employing supercomputers. Then, the engineers would rely in making samples by means of acquiring the services of drivers to make the drives for a couple of months or even more and will make necessary design after series of research and tests. It will take the Michelin several years to develop a tire, but now things are completely different, thanks to the emergence of supercomputers a prototype of the much desired, sturdy and well-designed tires can now be made in a matter of just few weeks. Supercomputers can simulate crashes and offers flexibilty in making various designs, indeed a cutting edge in competetion with other tire makers.

Versatile and lightning quick, supercomputer can fetch as high as one (1) Billion Dollars to build. Very expensive as it is, making the awesome computer of great magnitude will need a lot of time and effort to make. Other factors in building this powerful computing machine includes: the electricity to keep it working and functioning without letup, cooling system to keep it performing at its optimum best all the time, bear in mind that supercomputers employs layers of processors which are sensitive to heat as they can melt intstantly when exposed to heat as they can melt instantly when exposed to excessive heat. But it is worth all the gargantuan effort for at the end of the day the benefits of using these superb supercomputing supercomputers are truly helpful to humanity in a lot of ways!

My 6th Hub in the Christmas HubChallenge... :D

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