The largest machines.
WHAT A SUPERCOMPUTER IS
A machine among the most capable available, measured by sustained performance on benchmark problems.
WHAT THEY CONSIST OF
Very many nodes Accelerators, increasingly A specialised high-speed interconnect Parallel file systems Substantial power and cooling infrastructure
WHAT POWER CONSUMPTION LOOKS LIKE
Megawatts, continuously, which is a primary design constraint.
WHY THAT MATTERS
Performance per watt drives architectural choices more than raw performance.
WHAT ACCELERATORS PROVIDE
Far greater throughput on suitable workloads.
WHAT SUITABLE MEANS
Highly parallel, regular computation on large data.
WHAT PARALLEL FILE SYSTEMS PROVIDE
Storage that many nodes can read and write simultaneously at high aggregate rates.
WHAT THEY REQUIRE
Access patterns suited to them, since many small operations perform poorly.
HOW ACCESS IS OBTAINED
Allocation processes, typically competitive, at national or institutional facilities.
WHAT APPLICATIONS REQUIRE
A description of the science, the resources needed, and evidence the code scales.
WHAT MATTERS REGIONALLY
Such facilities are scarce here, and access is frequently through international collaboration or cloud alternatives.
