Supercomputers are the fastest computers as compared to general purpose computer. Supercomputers are used for scientific research purpose . It can perform over 1017 FLOPS. First supercomputer LARC ( Livermore Atomic Research Computer) was found at 1960 by UNIVAC . As per 2020 June statista report, 226 supercomputers of world’s top 500 supercomputers were located in China and USA had 113 supercomputers. Others were in the rest of the world. The most powerful and fastest supercomputer was Japan’s “Fugaku” as per Statista Report 2020. From the top 500 supercomputers, I will discuss with you about top 5 most powerful supercomputers and their specifications.
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1. Fugaku:-
Fugaku is the World fastest and powerful supercomputer in the world as per 2020 statista report. It is named after the name of highest mountain of Japan’s Mount Fuji. Fugaku was started development in 2014. The computer is made with Fujitsu A64FX microprocessor. The total programming cost was approx 1 billion dollar. It’s speed was 442 PFLOPS as per 2020 statista report. After upgrading the speed will be 2.0 EFLOPS. Fugaku’s operating system uses combining form of Linux and Kernel. It is the 100 times more powerful than K Computers which was started in 2011.
2. Summit:-
The world’s 2nd fastest supercomputer Summit is built by IBM for civilian scientific research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in USA. It’s speed was 200 PFLOPS. It has a storage of 200 PB. Summit was used against the challenges of Covid 19. It provides computing power, artificial intelligence, targeting challenges against Human health, cosmology, climatology etc. Summit operating system uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
3. Sierra:-
Sierra is the world 3rd fastest, most powerful supercomputer from USA. Sierra is developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is very much essential for nuclear weapon scientist to research against Nuclear security threat. It’s speed was 125 PFLOPS. It is almost similar to IBM’s Summit supercomputer. Sierra’s processor uses IBM POWER9 CPUs with Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. It also uses same operating system RHEL like summit.
4. Sunway TaihuLight:-
Sunway TaihuLight is the world 4th most powerful supercomputer located in china. It’s approx building cost was 273 million dollar. Sunway operating system uses Sunway RaiseOS 2.0.5 (Linux). It has a storage of 20 PB. It’s speed was 105-125 PFLOPS. Sunway was built for climate forecast, pharmaceutical research, life science and industrial design.
5. Tianhe-2:-
Tianhe-2 is the world 5th most powerful supercomputer located at Guangzhou in china. It was the world’s fastest supercomputer starting from 2013 to end of 2015. Tianhe-2 operating system uses Kylin Linux. It’s speed was 33 PFLOPS. It has a storage of 12.4 PB. It’s processor uses Xeon phi Coprocessor and Matrix 2000. Tianhe-2 was built for china’s administrative security applications.
