Every kid in the world (as well as some adults) wishes they had a toy like this. When we say toy we actually mean monster. These machines are used to run high processing tasks and their first job since they were created was to crack codes.
In the old days these super computers were as big as houses and were prone to overheating. We’re talking of course about Britain’s first super computer, Colossus. It was specifically designed to crack German codes during the second world war which the Britain’s intercepted on their recon missions. It could read five thousand characters per second which was pretty impressive in its day. Present day however you get computers that run forty-two and a half trillion operations in a second. So if you had to compare the two it would be a kick bike versus a Hayabusa super bike.
Super computers were also designed to run nuclear scenarios (such as nuclear effects and so forth). This would probably be the equivalent of thousands of Mathematicians (The Pro’s) sitting in a room and scribbling away at calculations.
As time continued other companies started using super computers. Weather stations use super computers to predict weather conditions such as rain, humidity, wind speed and more using information they gather from satellites.
Gaming Super Computers
MMORPG games (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) have their own super computers that run as servers. These computers calculate the effects, spawns, drops and other in game tasks to keep the world running for the millions players in it (A good example would be World of Warcraft).
Chess Super Computers
Meet chess champion Deep Blue who beat Garry Kasparov (Chess Champion,human) in a six-game match. Their latest game ended in a 3-3 draw.
The Fastest Super Computer?
Currently the fastest super computer is the Titan which can run 17.59 PetaFLOP/s which beats the previous champion, Sequoia which reached 16.32 petaFLOP/s. (As of 25th November)
Which country has the most super computers?
According to studies from Top500 the United States owns 274 of the worlds 500 super computers. Who’s second? China of course with 41.Google might have something to do with that (besides the US government being Technologically advanced) as they have massive servers to run and operate all of their online programs (gmail, google drive, cloud functions and more)
Fun Fact
The Air Force Research Laboratory has created their own interactive super computer by linking 1,760 PlayStation 3’s.
