If you thought you had a powerful computer in your hands, perhaps this news will make you change your mind, because below you are going to learn about the most powerful supercomputers with speeds, capacities and consumption that today escape our understanding.
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IBM Mira
We start our list from the bottom, and the fact is that the IBM Mira It holds fifth place in reference to the most powerful supercomputers in the world. This may sound a little strange when we find out that it reaches a whopping 8,6 petaflops, having the capacity to execute up to a total of ten thousand trillion calculations per second.
This equipment is located in the Department of Energy Argonne Laboratory in Illinois and at the moment we have not obtained data in reference to its manufacturing cost, but it makes our hair stand on end to know that it represents a consumption of five million dollars each year in electricity alone.
Fujitsu K Computers
We go up and find ourselves in fourth place with the Fujitsu K Computers, a supercomputer that is located in Japan and more specifically in the RIKEN, located in Kobe.
Inside we find 548.352 cores housed in 68.544 processors, having exceeded 10 petaflops in the tests carried out.
Regarding its consumption, it reaches 10 million dollars in a whole year.
IBM Sequoia
IBM repeats although this time in third position with the IBM Sequoia, a supercomputer located in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, which was built on behalf of the US National Nuclear Security Agency. It is currently used to carry out nuclear weapons simulations.
It reaches up to 16,32 petaflops and has 705.024 cores, for which a space of 280 m2 is necessary.
The manufacturing price amounts to 655 million dollars and in terms of its electrical consumption it reaches 7,9 MW, a fairly small amount compared to the rest of the models, standing out for being one of the most efficient. If you are thinking of buying a supercomputer, perhaps this is the one that will scare you the least at the end of the month J
Cray Titan
In second place we have the Cray Titan, an American design with 17,59 petaflops that is still in development and by 2016 could slightly approach the one that currently holds first place if it manages to reach the expected 20 petaflops.
This model was born in 2012 under the name of Jaguar and perfected during the following years, being considered at that time the sixth most powerful supercomputer.
It has 299.008 cores, 10 petabytes of storage (the equivalent of 10.000 TB) and has 710 Tebibytes of RAM.
Tianhe-2
And finally we find the Tianhe-2, considered the most powerful supercomputer today with 33,86 petaflops, although it is considered that in theory it can reach up to 54,9 petaflops.
It has 3.120.000 cores and has been developed by the China National University of Defense Technology.
We also do not have data about its final cost, but it is estimated to range between 200 and 300 million dollars. In terms of consumption, it reaches around 27 million dollars a year in electricity.
Industrial Engineering student and lover of writing and technology, for several years I have participated in various pages with the aim of always keeping myself informed of the latest trends and contributing my grain of sand in this immense dissemination network that we know as the Internet.
