Are supercomputers obsolete?

Five years ago, an IBM-built supercomputer designed to model the decay of the US nuclear weapons arsenal was clocked at speeds no computer in the history of Earth had ever reached. Today, that computer has been declared obsolete and it’s being taken offline.

Can I own a super computer?

As a result, only the largest organisations have been able to buy one. But as processors have evolved, and the cost of critical components like CPUs and RAM has fallen, so too has the headline price for a supercomputer. It is now possible for almost any business to buy a supercomputer – if they need one.

Why are supercomputers hosted in the cloud?

Cloud-native supercomputers include a third brain to build faster, more efficient systems. They add DPUs that offload security, communications, storage and other jobs modern systems need to manage.

What is a cloud supercomputer?

These days supercomputers aren’t necessarily esoteric, specialised hardware; they’re made up of high-end servers that are densely interconnected and managed by software that deploys high performance computing (HPC) workloads across that hardware. …

Is data center a supercomputer?

The difference between a supercomputer and a data center is how “connected” the computations are; supercomputer optimizes the communication between nodes. To put it another way, a data center does a lot of work but, most of the time, for different applications (services) whose dependencies are “sparse”.

What is the difference between HPC and cloud computing?

HPC is about high performance computing; it is not about having a number of computers/processors, but using them effectively in parallel to solve a problem faster. Cloud computing provides an opportunity to scale up/down resources as an application need shrinks or grows.

Is PC obsolescence inevitable?

PC obsolescence is obsolete. The latter is being driven by advances in 3D graphics and GPGPU capability. These abilities are than backported to the desktop space, where they keep things moving along, at least a bit. Tablets and phones are now driving evolution in computing, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Is the old CPU obsolescence model really dead?

That ended in 2005, but the arrival of multi-core CPUs, clever scheduling on Intel’s part, and sheer inertia kept the idea current. Here’s an example of just how dead the old obsolescence model truly is.

How fast have computers changed in the last 4 years?

Four years later, 1GHz CPUs with full-speed on-die cache, 128MB of PC-100 SDRAM, 7200 RPM, ATA-66 HDDs, and 16-32 MB of video RAM were selling for under $3000. In four years, CPU clockspeed quintupled. Actual performance gains were even higher, thanks to further improvements in CPU efficiency.

What is the future of the desktop computer?

The desktop’s evolution is effectively over and the laptop isn’t far behind. The latter is being driven by advances in 3D graphics and GPGPU capability. These abilities are than backported to the desktop space, where they keep things moving along, at least a bit.