History of supercomputing
The term "Super Computing" was first used in the New York World in 1929[7] to refer to large custom-built tabulators that IBM had made for Columbia University.At the end of 1958, Ferranti agreed to collaborate with Manchester University on the project, and the computer was shortly afterwards renamed Atlas, with the joint venture under the control of Tom Kilburn.It introduced a number of innovations, such as chaining, in which scalar and vector registers generate interim results that can be used immediately, without additional memory references which would otherwise reduce computational speed.[10][23] The Cray X-MP (designed by Steve Chen) was released in 1982 as a 105 MHz shared-memory parallel vector processor with better chaining support and multiple memory pipelines.[23] By 1983 Cray and Control Data were supercomputer leaders; despite its lead in the overall computer market, IBM was unable to produce a profitable competitor.[24] The Cray-2, released in 1985, was a four-processor liquid cooled computer totally immersed in a tank of Fluorinert, which bubbled as it operated.Seymour Cray began to work on a massively parallel computer in the early 1990s, but died in a car accident in 1996 before it could be completed.During the first half of the Strategic Computing Initiative, some massively parallel architectures were proven to work, such as the WARP systolic array, message-passing MIMD like the Cosmic Cube hypercube, SIMD like the Connection Machine, etc.The Paragon was a MIMD machine which connected processors via a high speed two-dimensional mesh, allowing processes to execute on separate nodes; communicating via the Message Passing Interface.[38] In 2004, the Earth Simulator supercomputer built by NEC at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) reached 35.9 teraflops, using 640 nodes, each with eight proprietary vector processors.Finally, starting in 2022 and until the present (as of December 2023[update]), the world's fastest supercomputer had become the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Frontier, also known as the OLCF-5 and hosted at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in Tennessee, United States.The Frontier is based on the Cray EX, is the world's first exascale supercomputer, and uses only AMD CPUs and GPUs; it achieved an Rmax of 1.102 exaFLOPS, which is 1.102 quintillion operations per second.The CoCom and its later replacement, the Wassenaar Arrangement, legally regulated, i.e. required licensing and approval and record-keeping; or banned entirely, the export of high-performance computers (HPCs) to certain countries.
Combined performance of 500 largest supercomputers
Fastest supercomputer
Supercomputer in 500th place
Cray-1Deutsches MuseumControl Data CorporationSeymour CrayCDC 6600IBM NORCUNIVAC LARCIBM 7030 StretchManchesterteraFLOPSNew York WorldtabulatorsColumbia UniversityIBM 7030IBM 360/91multiprogrammingmultiprocessoratomic instructionsSperry CorporationMinneapolisCDC 1604transistorizedHarwell CADETIBM 7090Fairchild Semiconductorspeed of lightmegaFLOPSFORTRANUniversity of MinnesotaCDC 7600clock speedSTAR-100Texas Instruments ASCvector processingAPL programming languageManchester Universitymicrosecondinstructions per secondTom KilburnsupercomputersIBM 7094svirtual memorypagingcore memorydrum memoryAtlas Supervisoroperating systemFluorinertCray-2vector processorchainingCray X-MPSteve Chenparallelliquid cooledCray Operating SystemUNICOSCray Y-MPvector processorsgallium arsenideCray-3massively parallelStrategic Computing InitiativeWARP systolic arrayCosmic CubeConnection MachineParagonSX-3/44RNEC CorporationNumerical Wind TunnelHitachi SR2201crossbarIntel ParagonIntel i860Message Passing InterfaceCray T3Etorus interconnectASCI RedAdvanced Simulation and Computing InitiativePentium ProLinpackPetascale computingBlue GeneArgonne National LaboratoryCray C90ASCI QEarth SimulatorTOP500Tianhe-IK computerSummitFugaku supercomputerworld's fastest supercomputerFrontierOak Ridge Leadership Computing FacilityTennesseeexascalesupercomputerexaFLOPSList of fastest computersPeak speed(Rmax)FujitsuNational Aerospace LaboratoryDoE-Sandia National LaboratoriesNew MexicoHitachiSR2201University of TokyoCP-PACSUniversity of TsukubaTsukubaASCI WhiteDoE-Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryCaliforniaEarth Simulator CenterYokohamaBlue Gene/LIBM RochesterMinnesotaU.S. National Nuclear Security AdministrationLawrence Livermore National LaboratoryRoadrunnerDoE-Los Alamos National LaboratoryJaguarDoE-Oak Ridge National LaboratoryNational Supercomputing Center