Several decades ago, no processor could compare with what is in the average computer. Now the situation has changed radically. Nobody is surprised at home PC systems for a long time, although they are hundreds of times more powerful than computers of the 70s.
The imagination of our contemporaries is struck by a completely different machine - a supercomputer. It is based on the most powerful processor.
As a rule, such machines are not owned by an individual, but by the whole state. All supercomputers in the world are counted and taken into account, because they are indispensable not only for science. The number of supercomputers determines the country's prestige: the more there are, the stronger the state that owns them. The first list of supercomputers appeared in 1993 and was named "Top 500". Since then it has been updated twice in a year. This rating is not drawn up for the sake of state ambitions. By “generating” a competitive atmosphere, it stimulates the progress of high technology. The country in which the most powerful processor in the world is located takes first place in this "top list".
More recently, the United States was the leader on this list, but after the last update, Americans and China squeezed Japan. America remained the leader only in the number of supercomputers, but the most powerful of them "settled" in Asia. So who owns the most powerful processor? Today, there are two supercomputers with such processors. One was developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu. The brainchild of this company is called K-computer. The prefix "K"
stands for "ten quadrillion," however, the Japanese put another value into it. "K" in their understanding means "the main computer."
The "Top 500" Japanese car has been headed for two years, however, in the summer of 2011 it was not yet so powerful. Then K-computer consisted of 672 modules. The total number of eight-core processors that provide the computing power of the supercomputer exceeded 68 thousand. Each CPU was called SPARC64 and was developed by Fujitsu engineers. In one second, this monster made 8.16 quadrillion operations. Having created the most powerful processor, Japanese scientists did not calm down. They brought the number of CPUs of their supercomputer to 88128. Thanks to this, the number of operations increased to 11.28 quadrillion. It is noteworthy that with such a performance, the K-computer consumes little power, and it looks quite compact. The reason for this is the fluid system with which the components of the machine are cooled. The Linux system controls the supercomputer, and it is designed for global scientific
calculations.
What is the most powerful processor competing with the Japanese miracle? Of course, the Chinese system Ttianhe-1A, which K-computer displaced from the first place. American supercomputer Jaguar got only the third place. The parameters of these machines are also impressive, because they consist of thousands of processors and video cards, and their memory is measured not in terabytes, but in petabytes. Russia lagged behind the leaders of the list quite strongly. In terms of the total number of supercomputers, she stopped at the seventh line - there are only twelve of them in Russia, and each of them has significantly less power than Japanese and Chinese machines.
Looking at these technological advances, it seems that the most powerful computer has already been invented. However, there is no limit to perfection. Perhaps in a year we will be surprised at the new miracle machine.