For most of us, a computer probably seems fast enough if it can play 8K video or the latest Far Cry at 60 frames per second without slowing down. However, there are many complex tasks that require billions of calculations per second that a desktop computer with an i9 processor cannot do.
This is where supercomputers come in handy. They offer high levels of performance that enable governments and organizations to solve problems that would be impossible with conventional computers.
Modern supercomputers are built with AI (artificial intelligence) workloads in mind. In addition to weather forecasting, climate research, physical modeling and oil and gas exploration, supercomputers are helping scientists discover more sustainable building materials and study human proteins and cellular systems in extreme detail.
Typically, supercomputer performance is measured in floating point operations per second (flops). In scientific computing, flop is a more precise number than measurement instructions per second.
The first supercomputer, the Livermore Atomic Research Computer, was built for the US Naval Research and Development Center in 1960.
To show you how far we've come since then, we've compiled a detailed list of the fastest supercomputers in the world. They are all non-partitioned computer systems running Linux.
Supercomputer Sequoia
Speed: 17.1 petaflops Cores: 1,572,864
Supplier: IBM. Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence, USA.
Sequoia uses IBM BlueGene/Q servers to achieve theoretical peak performance of 20 petaflops. It has 123% more cores and is 37% more energy efficient than its predecessor, the K Computer.
While the machine is primarily used to simulate nuclear weapons, it is also available for many scientific purposes, such as climate change and human genome analysis. It also demonstrated its great scalability using 3D modeling of the electrophysiology of the human heart.
Supercomputer PANGEA III
Speed: 17.8 petaflops Cores: 291,024
Supplier: IBM Location: CSTJF Center for Technical and Scientific Research in Pau, France.
Pangea III is based on IBM's high-performance architecture optimized for artificial intelligence. IBM and NVIDIA worked together to create the industry's only CPU-GPU connection, NVLink, which delivers more than 5 times higher memory bandwidth between IBM POWER9 processors and NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensor Core than traditional x86-based systems.
The architecture not only improves computing performance, but also improves energy efficiency. The new system uses less than 10% of the energy consumption per petaflop, like its predecessor, Pangea I and II.
Pangea III has a variety of applications, particularly in three distinct areas—seismic imaging exploration and development, development and production models, and asset valuation and selectivity.
Lassen supercomputer
Speed: 18.2 petaflops Cores: 288,288
Vendor: IBM Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence, USA.
Lassen is designed for unclassified simulation and analysis. It is installed in the same laboratory and uses the same building components as Sierra (the #2 fastest supercomputer).
Even though the Sierra is a large system, the Lassen itself is a decent size, being exactly 1/6 the size of its big brother. The Lassen system is contained in 40 racks, while the Sierra rises to 240 racks.
IBM Power9 processors and 253 terabytes of RAM help Lassen achieve an incredible 23 petaflops of performance.
Summit Service
The giant, installed in the Oak Ridge laboratory, weighs an insane 340 tons! For comparison, a Boeing 747 weighs the same.
Someone makes 300 tons fly into the sky, and someone makes calculations and perform operations
Summit also turns out to be a very power-hungry device, requiring 15 MW of energy for normal operation. This amount would be enough to power 8,100 residential buildings.
This field of solar panels is not enough to power the Summit supercomputer.
The internal components of the supercomputer get very hot under high loads, so an advanced water system is used to cool them, distilling about 18 thousand liters of water per minute.
The water cooling system consumes a third of the total energy spent on the system
Supercomputer SuperMUC-NG
Speed: 19.4 petaflops Cores: 305,856
Vendor: Lenovo Location: Leibniz Supercomputing Center, Germany
SuperMUC-NG has 6,400 Lenovo ThinkSystem SD650 direct water-cooled compute nodes and more than 700 terabytes of main memory and 70 petabytes of storage space. It is connected to powerful visualization systems that include a large 4K stereoscopic firewall and a 5-sided CAVE artificial virtual reality environment.
The supercomputer serves European scientists in many fields, including genome analysis, fluid dynamics, quantum chromodynamics, life sciences, medicine and astrophysics.
AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure
Speed: 19.8 petaflops Cores: 391,680
Supplier: Fujitsu Location: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan.
It is the world's first large-scale open AI computing infrastructure that delivers 32,577 petaflops of peak performance. It has 1088 nodes, each containing 2 Intel Xenon Gold Scalable processors, 4 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, 2 HCA InfiniBand EDR and 1 NVMe SSD.
Fujitsu Limited claims the supercomputer can achieve 20 times the thermal density of conventional data centers and the cooling capacity of a 70 kW rack using hot water and air cooling.
The most powerful gaming PC yet
Hello to all game lovers! In this collection I wanted to show you the most powerful PC at the moment, I’ll tell you right away - expensive.
Processor Intel Core i9-9900K BOX
The best processor in every sense. 8 core processor with 16 threads. The base frequency is 3600Mhz, but the turbo boost of 5000Mhz is just cool. I don't know what else to say about this beautiful creature.
GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard
One of the best motherboards at the moment. Completely over fit and even has a cool backlight. And this motherboard will help with overclocking, although we already have everything at the highest level. This motherboard is equipped with a sound adapter - Realtek ALC1220-VB, which is not bad.
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2080 Ti WINDFORCE graphics card
The best video card from nvidia that shows the best results. Turbo frequency 1545Mhz, with 11 GB of GDDR6 memory. By purchasing this assembly you will completely forget about all the problems with FPS. Especially with this video card. I don’t even know what to say – it’s just the best video card.
RAM KFA2 HOF White RGB 16GB
According to the manufacturers themselves, this RAM has 100% original chips, which passed all tests with a threefold load and showed the best results. This RAM will operate in two channels. But if you have the opportunity, you can buy 2 16 GB dies, which will definitely be enough for you for many years to come) Well, the most important advantage of this RAM is the 4000mhz frequency, which will help you forget about all your PC problems.
SilverStone Primera PM01-RGB case
The case was simply created for our assembly. This is really some kind of car, made in white. This case has good ventilation and, most importantly, there is room for water cooling, and in addition to this, this case has 4 120mm fans.
Corsair H150i Pro RGB Cooling System
Dropsy, which will not really help us in our assembly. It will cool the processor well + will look incredibly beautiful in our assembly. Maximum rotation speed 1,600 revolutions per minute. Also, our water cooling is distinguished by its reliability and its lighting.
Seasonic Prime 1000W power supply
One of the best power supplies, as it is distinguished by its high-quality components and completely modular use. According to the manufacturers themselves, they use the highest quality capacitors, which provide ultra-low resistance, and copper plates replace wiring, which will increase efficiency. This power supply is also certified Gold 80 plus, 1000W.
Cables and connectors
Connectors for powering the processor (CPU) - 2x 4+4 pin
Connectors for video card power (PCI-E) - 8x 6+2 pin
Number of 15-pin SATA connectors - 12 pcs.
1024 GB SSD M.2 drive Samsung 970 EVO Plus
One of the best ssd drives that will show incredible speed. Maximum read speed – 3500 MB/sec, maximum write speed – 3300 MB/sec. I hope that 1TB of memory will definitely be enough for you), but I think if someone builds such a PC, it will not be a problem for them to buy 1 more drive.
Let's sum it up
Processor Intel Core i9-9900K BOX — 39,499 rubles
GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard — 13,999 rubles
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2080 Ti WINDFORCE video card — 84,499 rubles
RAM KFA2 HOF White RGB 16GB — 16,999 rubles
SilverStone Primera PM01-RGB case — 14,299 rubles
Cooling system Corsair H150i Pro RGB — 14,299 rubles
Power supply Seasonic Prime 1000W — 16,799 rubles
1024 GB SSD M.2 drive Samsung 970 EVO Plus - 16,999 rubles
Total - 217392 rubles
Trinity supercomputer
Speed: 21.2 petaflops Cores: 979,072
Seller: Cray Location: Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA
Trinity is built to provide extraordinary computing capabilities for the NNSA nuclear security enterprise. It aims to improve geometric and physical fidelity in nuclear weapons simulation code while ensuring the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the nuclear arsenal.
The supercomputer was developed in two stages: the first stage used the Intel Xeon Haswell processor, and the second stage saw a significant increase in performance using the Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing processor. It can deliver peak performance of over 41 petaflops.
Supercomputers
A supercomputer is a computer with maximum performance. With the rapid development of this field, it is quite difficult to judge the best characteristics and models of supercomputers.
In 1993, a project was launched to rank the 500 best computing systems in the world. The list is published 2 times a year in June and November. According to the latest rating, we present the best computing machines of our time:
- Titan. An updated version of the Jaguar supercomputer has been installed in Tennessee. It has more than 18 thousand processors and occupies an area of 404 m². Its performance is more than 17 petaflops. It was created for the purpose of carrying out scientific calculations and took first place in the ranking in November 2012.
- Piz Daint. This supercomputer is located in Switzerland and is named after one of the Swiss mountains in the Alps. The most powerful supercomputer in Europe. It is in fifth place in the latest ranking presented.
- Tianhe-2. This Chinese supercomputer has been ranked first for 6 years in a row, but is now in third place. The device covers an area of 720 m². The performance of this machine is more than 34 petaflops.
- Sunway Taihu Light. The famous Chinese supercomputer ranks second in the list of the best supercomputers of our time. The machine is entirely based on processors developed in China. The device performance is about 93 petaflops.
- Summit. It is considered one of the most modern supercars. Launched in mid-2020 by IBM and ORNT. The machine includes more than 4 thousand servers. One server uses two 22-core processors. The supercomputer was developed specifically for the US Department of Energy National Laboratory for scientific research. A special cooling system for more than 15 thousand liters of water has been developed for this computer.
Supercomputer Piz Daint
Speed: 21.2 petaflops Cores: 387,872
Seller: Cray Location: Swiss National Supercomputing Center, Switzerland
This supercomputer, named after the Piz Daint mountain in the Swiss Alps, runs on an Intel Xeon E5-26xx microprocessor and an NVIDIA Tesla P100.
Piz Daint uses DataWarp in "burst buffer mode" to increase the effective bandwidth to and from storage devices. This speeds up data input/output speed, making it easier to analyze millions of small, unstructured files.
In addition to his daily tasks, he can perform data analysis on some of the most intensive projects in the world, such as data obtained from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.
Build a High-End gaming computer 2020
Build Specifications
| CPU | 2x Intel – Xeon E5-2699 V3 2.3GHz 18-Core |
| Motherboard | Asus Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Dual-CPU |
| RAM | 2x Crucial – 256GB (4 x 64GB) DDR4-2666 |
| Coolers | 2x Corsair – H80i Liquid CPU Cooler |
| Graphic arts | 4x PNY NVIDIA Quadro M6000 12GB |
| SSD | 2x Intel - DC P3608 4TB |
| Memory | Buslink - CipherShield 6TB |
| power unit | Super Flower – Leadex 2000W 80+ Platinum |
| Sound card | Creative Labs - ZXR 24-bit 192 KHz |
| LAN card | StarTech - ST2000PEXPSE |
| Frame | Cooler Master - Cosmos II (Black) |
Motherboard Asus Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Dual-CPU LGA2011-3 Motherboard
The cost of this motherboard varies from $530 at NewEgg to $600 at Amazon (32-36 thousand rubles). the SSI EEB form factor . It consists of high quality components and supports 4 video cards. Maximum support 512GB RAM.
Processors 2x Intel – Xeon E5-2699 V3 2.3GHz 18-Core OEM/Tray Processor
The total cost of two Xeon E5-2699 is $8,000 or 480,000 rubles. Delivery from Amazon will cost about $100 more using a Parcel Post, but with an extra 500 thousand, you can fly for two stones. The maximum processor clock speed with Turbo Boost is 3.5 GHz.
Famous DIYer Linus Sebastian ( Linus Tech Tips ) reviewed a similar system with two Xeon E5-2699 . A test of 7 gamers simultaneously connected to one system unit showed incredible results (about 60-70 FPS in Crysis 3 ). The power of these processors is enough to simultaneously render complex simulations in Cinema4D , sculpt in ZBrush and work with animation in Maya .
RAM – 2x Crucial – 256GB (4 x 64GB) DDR4-2666
The Asus Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Dual-CPU motherboard has 8 RAM slots and a maximum support of 512GB. Crucial 256GB Kit (4 x 64GB) DDR4-2666 is ideal for our system. 4 64 GB sticks on the official website crucial.com will cost $4,143 or 248,580 rubles. Since there are 8 slots, and we have room to put 4 more of the same dies, the total cost of RAM will be $8286 or 497160 rubles.
CPU Coolers – 2x Corsair – H80i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
One such cooler will cost $152 or 9120 rubles. Using simple arithmetic, the total cost of coolers is 18,240 rubles.
Video cards – 4x PNY NVIDIA Quadro M6000 12GB
The cost of one video card varies from $2000 to $2500 dollars. NVIDIA Quadro M6000 with 3072 universal processors is professional for computing huge amounts of data, working with highly complex simulations, GPU rendering and more. 4 such video cards in SLI can make this assembly one of the most powerful gaming PCs in the world. Total: 600,000 rub.
Memory – 2x Intel – DC P3608 4TB PCI-E Solid State Drive
To quickly read data, two Intel DC P3608 4TB PCI-E SSDs with a total cost of $13,400 or 804,000 rubles are ideal for this assembly.
Case – Cooler Master – Cosmos II (Black) ATX Full Tower Case
The impressive dimensions of this case will allow you to accommodate all the components, and overall it looks quite stylish.
Power supply – Super Flower – Leadex 2000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
The cost of this power supply is about 30,000 rubles. Super Flower Leadex Platinum is a high-end power supply, created in collaboration with the famous overclocker 8Pack, whose build you could see just above. The 80Plus Platinum certification demonstrates high efficiency.
Sound card – Creative Labs – ZXR 24-bit 192 KHz Sound Card
Featuring an SNR of 124dB, the card includes a DBPro daughterboard and audio control module for unparalleled audio reproduction and content creation. A signal-to-noise ratio or SNR of 124dB means your audio will be more than 99.99% pure, which is more than 89.1 times better than the motherboard. The cost of this sound card is $213 or 12,780 rubles.
Network card – StarTech – ST2000PEXPSE PCI-Express x1 10/100/1000 Mbps Network Adapter
External memory – Buslink – CipherShield 6TB External Hard Drive
To store 4K video and a sea of other content, you can install - Buslink - CipherShield 6TB costing $1,499 or 90,000 rubles.
Monitors – ASUS – ROG Swift 27″ IPS LED 4K UHD G-SYNC Monitor HDR1000 – Black
ROG Swift PG27UQ 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) runs at a 144Hz refresh rate, providing gamers with detailed and crisp visuals at extremely smooth frame rates. With ROG Swift, you can experience unparalleled detail, images, and text. The price will be from $2000 or 120,000 rubles.
Frontera supercomputer
Speed: 23.5 petaflops Cores: 448,448
Vendor: Dell EMC Location: Texas Computing Center, USA
Frontera opens up new possibilities in development and research by providing vast computing resources that make it easier for scientists to solve many complex problems in a wide range of areas.
Frontera has two compute subsystems: the first is focused on double-precision performance, and the second is focused on single-precision streaming memory. It also has cloud interfaces and multiple application nodes to host virtual servers.
Supercomputer Tianhe-2A
Speed: 61.4 petaflops Cores: 4,981,760
Vendor: NUDT Location: National Supercomputing Center Guangzhou, China
With more than 16,000 computer nodes, Tianhe-2A represents the world's largest installation of Intel Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi processors. Although each node has 88 gigabytes of memory, the total memory (processor + coprocessor) is 1375 tebibytes.
China spent 2.4 billion yuan (US$390 million) to build this supercomputer. Currently, it is mainly used in modeling, analysis and national security applications.
8PACK OrionX
The 8PACK OrionX case is made in the usual “gamer” style: a combination of red and black, bright neon lighting, strict forms
The build price of the 8PACK OrionX device is much lower than the Zeus Computer. This is understandable: the creators relied on performance, and not on appearance and jewelry.
8PACK OrionX will cost the buyer $30,000. The author of the assembly is the famous designer and computer builder Ian Perry. This man managed to combine the extreme power of 2016 components and the aggressive appearance of the case.
The characteristics of the 8PACK OrionX personal computer are amazing. It seems that this device can run absolutely everything at high settings and with exorbitant FPS.
Designer Perry chose the Asus ROG Strix Z270 I as the motherboard, which costs just over 13,000 rubles in Russia. The processor is a super-powerful Core i7-7700K with a frequency of 5.1 MHz and the possibility of subsequent overclocking. The graphics in this iron monster are provided by an NVIDIA Titan X Pascal video card with 12 GB of video memory. This component costs at least 70,000 rubles.
A total of about 11 TB of physical memory is installed, 10 of which are on a Seagate Barracuda 10TB HDD and 1, divided into 512 GB, on two Samsung 960 Polaris SSDs. RAM is provided by Corsair Dominator Platinum 16 GB.
Unfortunately, in Russia, purchasing a computer from Ian Perry is quite problematic: you have to assemble the system units yourself or look for approximate analogues on sale.
Such a powerful assembly is just the tip of the iceberg, because in fact the device from Ian Perry is an assembly of two computers working simultaneously. The above configuration allows the PC to handle games, and for office work a parallel system with separate components is connected.
There is an Intel Core i7-6950X processor at 4.4 MHz installed in the Asus X99 Rampage V Extreme Edition 10 motherboard, three NVIDIA Titan X Pascal 12GB graphics accelerators. RAM reaches 64 GB, and 4 hard drives are responsible for physical memory, three of which are HDD, and one is SSD.
This high-tech treat costs $30,000 and seems to be well worth the price tag.
Supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight
Speed: 93 petaflops Cores: 10,649,600
Vendor: NRCPC Location: National Supercomputing Center Wuxi, China
TaihuLight's computing power comes from its proprietary SW26010 multi-core processor, which includes both computational processing elements and processing controls.
A single SW26010 delivers over 3 teraflops of peak performance with 260 compute elements (integrated into a single processor). Each compute processing element has scratchpad memory that serves as a user-managed cache, greatly reducing memory bottlenecks in most applications.
In addition to life sciences and pharmaceutical research, TaihuLight is used to simulate a universe with 10 trillion digital particles. However, China is trying to achieve much more: the country has already announced its goal of becoming a leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.
4Titan – 17.6 Pflop/sec
In addition to being one of the fastest computers in the world, Titan is also considered one of the most energy efficient, with a rating of 2142.77 megaflops per watt of power consumption. The secret to saving energy is using Nvidia accelerators, which provide up to 90% of the total computing power, which, by the way, is 17.6 petaflops. Thanks to them, Titan has noticeably reduced its dimensions - now only 404 square meters are enough to accommodate it.
Supercomputer Sierra
Speed: 94.6 petaflops Cores: 1,572,480
Supplier: IBM. Location: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence, USA.
Sierra offers up to 6 times the sustained performance and 7 times the workload performance of its Sequoia predecessor. It combines two types of processor chips: IBM Power 9 processors and Nvidia Volta GPUs.
Sierra is specifically designed to evaluate the performance of nuclear weapons systems. It is used for predictive applications in stockpile management, the US nuclear weapons reliability testing program and maintenance without any nuclear testing.
