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What makes a supercomputer "super"?
April, 2008Amy Apon, professor of computer science and computer engineering, replies:
In the past, supercomputers were built with proprietary, expensive components and ran specialized software. Many of today's supercomputers are built from the same types of computers that may be found in a typical computer store, and they run an operating system (Linux) found on many desktop computers. The difference between a typical desktop computer for the home or office and a supercomputer has to do with the number of computers and the technology, both hardware and software, that is used to connect the units together.
As an example, The Star of Arkansas, the newest supercomputer at the University of Arkansas, is built from 157 commodity computers from Dell Corporation. Each computer runs the Linux operating system. Except for the number of computers, this sounds big, but rather ordinary. However, in addition to two ordinary networks, the computers are connected with a very fast and expensive network. Star also has several specialized software and hardware systems for monitoring usage and failures, managing the start and end of applications, and accessing data in parallel.
Finally, the applications that run on a supercomputer are much more demanding of the hardware than the applications you typically run at one's house or office. The applications that run on Star will need to access an amount of data that is perhaps a thousand times larger than the data accessed in a typical application on a home computer. Also, some of these applications will run on dozens of processors at the same time for several months until completion. Some of the most challenging problems we face in science and engineering today, such as global warming, weather prediction, and cures for diseases such as avian flu or AIDS, are being solved on supercomputers.