A supercomputer is a computer that is considered at the time of its introduction to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929[1] to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.

Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word "supercomputer", a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word "computer". In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in a parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash". Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as IBM and HP, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience

Answered by laks , an ibibo Master, at 3:20 PM on May 15, 2008

A supercomputer is a computer that performs at or near the currently highest operational rate for computers. A supercomputer is typically used for scientific and engineering applications that must handle very large databases or do a great amount of computation (or both). At any given time, there are usually a few well-publicized supercomputers that operate at the very latest and always incredible speeds. The term is also sometimes applied to far slower (but still impressively fast) computers. Most supercomputers are really multiple computers that perform parallel processing. In general, there are two parallel processing approaches: symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and massively parallel processing (MPP).

Perhaps the best-known builder of supercomputers has been Cray Research, now a part of Silicon Graphics. Some supercomputers are at "supercomputer center," usually university research centers, some of which, in the United States, are interconnected on an Internet backbone known as vBNS or NSFNet. This network is the foundation for an evolving network infrastructure known as the National Technology Grid. Internet2 is a university-led project that is part of this initiative.

At the high end of supercomputing are computers like IBM's "Blue Pacific," announced on October 29, 1998. Built in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California., Blue Pacific is reported to operated at 3.9 teraflop (trillion operations per second), 15,000 times faster than the average personal computer. It consists of 5,800 processors containing a total of 2.6 trilllion bytes of memory and interconnected with five miles of cable. It was built to simulate the physics of a nuclear explosion. IBM is also building an academic supercomputer for the San Diego Supercomputer Center that will operate at 1 teraflop. It's based on IBM's RISC System/6000 and the AIX operating system and will have 1,000 microprocessors with IBM's own POWER3 chip.

At the lower end of supercomputing, a new trend, called clustering, suggests more of a build-it-yourself approach to supercomputing. The Beowulf Project offers guidance on how to "strap together" a number of off-the-shelf personal computer processors, using Linux operating systems, and interconnecting the processors with Fast Ethernet. Applications must be written to manage the parallel processing.

Answered by Nagendra , an ibibo Master, at 8:43 AM on May 07, 2008

Hi Tingy

Supercomputers are computers which are many times faster than personal computers systems and achieves highest speeds on calculative work. They therefore are tend to be used in scientific and high-tech applications. The first supercomputers were designed by Seymour Cray and were known as Cray computers. The Cray-2 was the world's fastest computer from 1985 to 1989. Currently the fastest supercomputer is Blue Gene/L, built by IBM which is a cluster of 65,536 computers and has a staggering processing rate of 478.2 TFLOPS (Tera FLoating Point Operations Per Second)

India began developing supercomputers in the late 1980s after being refused one by the US. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) developed India’s first modern supercomputer Param Padma which has 1 teraflop of power, which means it can make 1 trillion processes per second.

EKA, a supercomputer built in early 2000 at the Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a subsidiary of the TATA Group has been rated as the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world and fastest supercomputer in Asia in the list of Top500 Supercomputers. EKA uses nearly 1800 computing nodes and has a peak performance of 170 Teraflops.

Thanks n regards, Su

Answered by Suparn@ , an ibibo Master, at 7:33 PM on May 04, 2008

Supercomputers, just like any other typical computer, have two basic parts. The first one is the CPU which executes the commands it needs to do. The other one is the memory which stores data. The only difference between an ordinary computer and supercomputers is that supercomputers have their CPUs opened at faster speeds than standard computers. This certain length of time determines the exact speed that a CPU can work. By using complex and state-of-the-art materials being connected as circuits,supercomputer designers optimize the functions of the machine. They also try to have smaller length of circuits connected as possible in order for the information from the memory reach the CPU at a lesser time.

Supercomputers have been designed to do complex calculations at faster speeds than other computers. Its designers make use of 2 processes for the enhancement of its performance.The first method is called pipelining.It does complex operations at the same time by grouping numbers which have the same order that it calculates and these are passed to the CPU in an orderly manner. The circuits in the CPU continuously perform the operations while data is being entered into it.
A supercomputer is a computer that is considered, or was considered at the time of its introduction, to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929[1] to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.

Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word "supercomputer", a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word "computer". In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in a parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash". Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as IBM and HP, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience.
The Cray-2 was the world's fastest computer from 1985 to 1989.
The Cray-2 was the world's fastest computer from 1985 to 1989.

The term supercomputer itself is rather fluid, and today's supercomputer tends to become tomorrow's normal computer. CDC's early machines were simply very fast scalar processors, some ten times the speed of the fastest machines offered by other companies. In the 1970s most supercomputers were dedicated to running a vector processor, and many of the newer players developed their own such processors at a lower price to enter the market. The early and mid-1980s saw machines with a modest number of vector processors working in parallel become the standard. Typical numbers of processors were in the range of four to sixteen. In the later 1980s and 1990s, attention turned from vector processors to massive parallel processing systems with thousands of "ordinary" CPUs, some being off the shelf units and others being custom designs. (This is commonly and humorously referred to as the attack of the killer micros in the industry.) Today, parallel designs are based on "off the shelf" server-class microprocessors, such as the PowerPC, Itanium, or x86-64, and most modern supercomputers are now highly-tuned computer clusters using commodity processors combined with custom interconnects.

Answered by shepherd , an ibibo Master, at 12:41 PM on April 19, 2008

The fastest type of computer. Supercomputers are very expensive and are employed for specialized applications that require immense amounts of mathematical calculations. For example, weather forecasting requires a supercomputer. Other uses of supercomputers include animated graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, and petroleum exploration.

The chief difference between a supercomputer and a mainframe is that a supercomputer channels all its power into executing a few programs as fast as possible, whereas a mainframe uses its power to execute many programs concurrently.

Answered by Bishan Preet , an ibibo Specialist, at 12:17 AM on April 18, 2008

Super computer is a computer that is considered, or was considered at the time of its introduction, to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.

Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for five years (1985–1990). Cray, himself, never used the word "supercomputer", a little-remembered fact is that he only recognized the word "computer". In the 1980s a large number of smaller competitors entered the market, in a parallel to the creation of the minicomputer market a decade earlier, but many of these disappeared in the mid-1990s "supercomputer market crash". Today, supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by "traditional" companies such as IBM and HP, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience.
The Cray-2 was the world's fastest computer from 1985 to 1989.
The Cray-2 was the world's fastest computer from 1985 to 1989.

The term supercomputer itself is rather fluid, and today's supercomputer tends to become tomorrow's normal computer. CDC's early machines were simply very fast scalar processors, some ten times the speed of the fastest machines offered by other companies. In the 1970s most supercomputers were dedicated to running a vector processor, and many of the newer players developed their own such processors at a lower price to enter the market. The early and mid-1980s saw machines with a modest number of vector processors working in parallel become the standard. Typical numbers of processors were in the range of four to sixteen. In the later 1980s and 1990s, attention turned from vector processors to massive parallel processing systems with thousands of "ordinary" CPUs, some being off the shelf units and others being custom designs. (This is commonly and humorously referred to as the attack of the killer micros in the industry.) Today, parallel designs are based on "off the shelf" server-class microprocessors, such as the PowerPC, Itanium, or x86-64, and most modern supercomputers are now highly-tuned computer clusters using commodity processors combined with custom interconnects.

Answered by Archit , an ibibo Advisor, at 8:03 PM on April 16, 2008

Supercomputers are multi processor based computers which are meant for large and quick calculations. They are huge and have many high performance processors to do the computing of large and big complex calculations or analyze the data.

Answered by "D" , an ibibo Advisor, at 5:09 PM on April 16, 2008

A Super computer is a computer with very high processing speed which designed to do complex calculations.
For example, weather forecasting requires a supercomputer. Other uses of supercomputers include animated graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, and petroleum exploration.

Super computer designers make use of 2 processes for the enhancement of its performance.

The first method is called pipelining.It does complex operations at the same time by grouping numbers which have the same order that it calculates and these are passed to the CPU in an orderly manner.

Another method used is called parallelism. It does calculations in a similar than orderly way. This is where it performs various datas at the same time and moves ahead step by step.

All supercomputers make use of parallelism or pipelining separately or even combine them to enhance its processing speed.

Answered by Ashish Yadav , an ibibo Wizard, at 4:55 PM on April 16, 2008

well tingtong, A supercomputer is a computer that is considered, or was considered at the time of its introduction, to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.
Supercomputers, just like any other typical computer, have two basic parts. The first one is the CPU which executes the commands it needs to do. The other one is the memory which stores data. The only difference between an ordinary computer and supercomputers is that supercomputers have their CPUs opened at faster speeds than standard computers. This certain length of time determines the exact speed that a CPU can work. By using complex and state-of-the-art materials being connected as circuits,supercomputer designers optimize the functions of the machine. They also try to have smaller length of circuits connected as possible in order for the information from the memory reach the CPU at a lesser time.

Supercomputers have been designed to do complex calculations at faster speeds than other computers. Its designers make use of 2 processes for the enhancement of its performance.The first method is called pipelining.It does complex operations at the same time by grouping numbers which have the same order that it calculates and these are passed to the CPU in an orderly manner. The circuits in the CPU continuously perform the operations while data is being entered into it.

Another method used is called parallelism. It does calculations in a similar than orderly way. This is where it performs various datas at the same time and moves ahead step by step. A usual way to do it is connecting together various CPUs which does calculations together. Each of these CPUs do the commands it needs to carry out on every piece of information.

All supercomputers make use of parallelism or pipelining separately or even combine them to enhance its processing speed. However,an increased demand for calculation machines brought upon the creation of the (MPP)massively-parallel processing supercomputers. It consists of various machines connected together to attain a high level of parallelism.

For more information visit the source site:
http://www.essortment.c om/all/supercomputersw_ppk.htm

Answered by Uttam , an ibibo Master, at 2:14 PM on April 16, 2008

A supercomputer is a computer that is considered, or was considered at the time of its introduction, to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.

Answered by pooja , an ibibo Master, at 1:10 PM on April 16, 2008