Curious Droid presents the top 10 fastest computers in the world how do they
compare to a PC or iPad pro if you need to model things like the world's weather,
nuclear reactions, molecular dynamics or simulate the first few seconds after the
Big Bang you're gonna need some pretty serious computing power but just how
much more powerful other top 10 supercomputers compared to the PC on
your desktop or an iPad Pro for example in this video we'll see just how
powerful supercomputers have become but first we need to know how do you measure
a computer's performance there are lots of ways to do this but the most common
high-performance systems and the simplest to understand is to measure how
many calculations per second they're capable of the unit of measurement is
called the flop or floating point operation a flop is a calculation that
would be even adding subtracting multiplying or dividing two numbers with
decimal points in them for example 10.545 multiplied by 6.387 would be
a single flop modern computers can do with billions of times a second at the
time of making this video in February 2016 the latest iPad pro
with the A9x dual core CPU is capable of around about 1.5 gigaFLOPS that's one and a
half thousand million flops per second a typical $1,000 PC with a single Intel
5820 6 core CPU is capable of around 100 gigaFLOPS
66 times more than an iPad Pro you can measure the performance of your own
Intel based PC or Mac or mobile device with the same type of Linpack software
as a used to benchmark supercomputers just look for the link in the
description of this video because supercomputers are so much more powerful
they are measured in PetaFLOPS one PetaFLOP is equal to 1,000 teraFLOPs
and one teraFLOP is equal to 1000 GigaFLOPs and remember our PC was 100
gigaFLOPS and the iPad Pro 1.5 gigaFLOPs. A petaFLOP is equal to
about 1 million billion calculations per second one estimate suggests that it
would take a human about 32 million years to complete the same task now we
know one everyday computing device that you or I own is capable of let's see how it
compares to the top 10 supercomputers in the world. All the figures given were
correct as of November 2015 and gathered from the top500 list of supercomputers
at number ten we have the Stampede supercomputer the Texas Advanced
Computing Center at the University of Texas in United States this
supercomputer is made by Dell and has a maximum Linpack performance of 5.1
petaFLOPs that's equivalent of 51,000 of our $1000 PC's or 3.4 million iPad pros
it has 464,462 processing cores and 192Tb
of RAM and consumes approximately 4.5 megawatts of power at
maximum performance at number nine we have been Shaheen 2 at the King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology in saudi arabia this supercomputer is made
by Cray and has a maximum Linpack performance of 5.5 petaFLOPs that's
equivalent of 55,000 of our PCs or 3.66 million iPad pros it costs approximately
$51M to buy and install it has 196,608 processing cores and 790
terabytes of RAM
consumes a maximum power of 2.8 megawatts at number eight is the
Hazel Hen at the HLRS in Stuttgart Germany this is another super computer
made by Cray Inc and it has a maximum Linpack performance of 5.6 petaFLOPs
and is the fastest supercomputer in the European Union that's equipped to
56,000 of our PC's or 3.73 million iPad pros it has 185,088
processing cores and consumes a maximum of 3.2 megawatts of power at number
seven we have the Piz Daint at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center at Lugano
Switzerland the Piz Daint named after a nearby mountain is yet another
Cray built supercomputer has a maximum Linpack performance of 6.2 petaFLOPs thats
equivalence of 62,000 of our PCs or 4.13 million iPad pros it has 115,984
processing cores and 169Tb
of RAM and consumes a maximum of 2.3 megawatts of power at
number six is the trinity at the Los Alamos National Laboratory New Mexico
United States yes this is yet another Cray supercomputer and is a maximum Linpack
performance of 8.1 petaFLOPs
81,000 PCs or 5.4 million iPad pros it has 301,056 processing cores and
cost approximately $174M. At number
five we have the Mira Bluegene/Q at the US Department of Energy Argonne
National Laboratory Illinois United States this supercomputer was built by
IBM and has a maximum Linpack performance of 8.5 petaFLOPs that's the equivalent of
85,000 of our PCs or 5.66 million iPad pro's it has 780,432 processing
cores 768 terabytes of RAM and consumes a maximum of 3.9 megawatts
power no cost has been released by IBM but it was believed to have been around
$50M at number four is the K computer at the RIKEN advanced
Institute for computational science at Kobe Japan built by Fujitsu the K supercomputer
has a maximum Linpack performance of 10.5 petaFLOPs that
the equivalent of 105,000 of our PC's or 7 million iPad Pro's
it has 705,024 processing
cores and 1,410 terabytes of RAM and consumes a maximum of 12 megawatts
of power to give you an idea of a the perforemance of this machine simulation of
the human heart which had taken two years was accomplishing just one day on
the K computer at number three is the Sequoia Bluegene/Q at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory California United States the number three on the
top 10 list is built by IBM and has a maximum Linpack performace of 17.1 petaFLOPs
that's equivalent of 171,000 of our PC's or 11.4
million iPad pros it has 1,572,864
processing cores 1,572 terabytes of RAM and consumes
a maximum power of seven point eight mega watts
the primary use of a Sequoia is for nuclear weapons simulation but it would
also be used to study of the human genome, climate change and astronomy to
name but a few at number two is the Titan
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Tennessee United States another Cray built
supercomputer is at number two on the list and has a maximum Linpack
performance of 17.5 petaFLOPs that the equivalent of 175,000
thousand of our PCs
11.6 million iPad Pro's it has 560,640
processing cores 710 terabytes of RAM and consumes a
maximum of 7.1 mega watts power at the number one slot on the top 10 list of
the world's most powerful supercomputers is the Tianhe-2 or Milky Way 2 have a
national Supercomputer Center at Guangzhou City Guangdong Province China
this was built by the Chinese national university of defense technology and
has a maximum Linpack performance of 33.8 petaFLOPs thats the equivalent of 338,000
our PCs or 22.53 mIllion iPad Pro's it has 3,120,000
processing cores and 1024 terabytes
of RAM and consumed a maximum power of 17.8 megawatts the Tianhe-2 has been a
top supercomputer for the past three years running now in the top 500 list
which comes out twice a year so where do we go from here
well if anyone can figure out how to build a real quantum computer IBM have
previously stated that if one could be made with just 50 quantum bits or qubits
that could detect both types of errors and scale to large systems no
combination of today's top 500 supercomputers could successfully
outperform it until then we'll look forward to the first 1,000 petaflop or
1 exaFLOP machine in hopefully around 2025
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