Supercomputer

A term used to describe an extremely fast and powerful computer.

A 'supercomputer' is often made up of dozens of cabinets often taking up an entire floor of a building. It also draws an enormous amount of power compared to a mainframe - 1 MegaWatt is not unusual!

Their calculation speeds are measured in 'Teraflops' that is a million, million calculations per second.

As of 2007 the most powerful supercomputer on Earth is called BlueGene/L from IBM. It has a speed of 360 Teraflops and is used to simulate nuclear weapons. It has 65 thousand CPU chips, all running together.

Challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Supercomputer

2020-10

back to glossaryback to glossary