Which Is Today's Fastest Computer ?

Recently, a test chip developed by Intel Corp. contained eighty cores in it. I think this chip will remain in testing stage for a quite some time. We, computer enthusiasts in India are still digesting four cores. To my happiness, the chip was developed in Intel’s research lab in Bangalore, India. The war between Intel Corp. and AMD has resulted in an arms race (actually a chip race) to produce the most efficient processor. However, the burning question was “Which is today’s fastest computer?”

Before answering the question, we will have a look at the evolution of computers. Computing has its roots in early human civilizations.

The abacus is considered as the first computer. Tracing the development of modern computers from the abacus leads to a long list of equipments used for computing. For simplicity we will begin our journey from the year 1939 (advent of modern electronics). Here are some of the early events that made the development of today’s computers possible.

1939 : Hewlett Packard is Founded.


1940: The Complex Number Calculator is completed.




1943: Project Whirlwind begins.



1945: John von Neumann wrote "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" in which he outlined the architecture of a stored-program computer.1946: The public got its first glimpse of the ENIAC

and so on. For the complete list and for information about each breakthrough Click Here.

The Moore's law states that

"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year ... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer." (Wikipedia)

The growth is happening faster than the rate specified by Moore's law. Just think about the 80 core chip which I mentioned at beginning of this post. Then, Where do we stand now?. The answer to this question will answer our today's question "Which Is Today's Fastest Computer ?".

A website www.top500.org keeps track of the list of supercomputers and ranks them acoording to performance. Here is the latest list released during SC06.
In the first place is IBM BlueGene/L system with performance of 280.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second, or Tflop/s). Following closely in second is the new Sandia National Laboratories’ Cray Red Storm supercomputer with a performance of with 101.4 Tflops/s. For top ten list and more information visit the following link.
http://www.top500.org/lists/2006/11

280.6 teraflops/s is a huge amount when compared to the processors used in PC's. You cannot imagine the calculation power of the above jumbos. Well with luck I may get my hands on one of the above supercomputers before I die. Who knows, in fifty or odd years if, the progress continues in the present rate then we may use these supercomputers as PCs.

If you have any other answers or any other resources other than, the above resources feel free to mail at writewithmeblog@gmail.com . Comments and criticisms are taken positively. Remember, help yourself and help me. This Harravi signing off.