COMPUTER SPECIAL .....In a world of computers, these are the superheroes

In a world of computers, these are the superheroes

These supercomputers can perform several quadrillion calculations per second, which is almost a million times faster than a typical laptop PC

The latest ranking of the world’s most-powerful computers is out. Titled Top500, the ranking lists the 500 most powerful supercomputers on Earth. The bi-annual list, is compiled by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee together with a cloud-computing company. These supercomputers are used for modelling weather, ocean currents, artificial intelligence and more. Here’s the world’s eight most-powerful computers in the Top500 list:

IBM Power System AC922

Installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US

IBM Power System Accelerated Compute Server (AC922) delivers unprecedented performance for modern HPC, analytics, and artificial intelligence. Manufacturer: IBM Memory: 2,801,664 GB Processor: IBM POWER9 22C 3.07GHz Operating system: RHEL 7.4

Sunway TaihuLight

Installed at National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi, China

It contains some 41,000 chips and can carry out 93 quadrillion calculations per second. Manufacturer:Fujitsu Memory: 417,792 GB Processor: Xeon Gold 6148 20C 2.4GHz Operating system: Linux

Sierra - IBM Power System

S922LC

Installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US

It is built to crush the most advanced data applications — from the mission-critical workloads to next generation AI. Manufacturer: IBM Memory: 1,382,400 GB Processor: IBM POWER9 22C 3.1GHz Operating system: Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Tianhe-2A - TH-IVB-FEP Cluster

Installed at National Super Computer Centre in Guangzhou, China

Also known as the MilkyWay 2, it has 95 Petaflops peak performance and has been developed by a team of around 1,300 scientists and engineers. Manufacturer: NUDT Memory: 2,277,376 GB Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2692v2 12C 2.2GHz Operating system: Kylin Linux

Piz Daint - Cray XC50

Installed at Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Switzerland

It is a hybrid system that has been Europe’s fastest supercomputer since its debut in November 2013. Manufacturer: Cray Inc Memory: 340,480 GB Processor: Xeon E5-2690v3 12C 2.6GHz Operating system: Cray Linux Environment

Titan - Cray XK7

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US

Nicknamed ‘Titan’, it is capable of more than 20 petaflops of high performance computing power and is the world’s sixth powerful supercomputer. Manufacturer: Cray Inc. Memory: 710,144 GB Processor: Opteron 6274 16C 2.2GHz Operating system: Cray Linux Environment

Sequoia - BlueGene/Q

Installed at Livermore National Laboratory, US

Sequoia is an energy-efficient system that burns 7.89 megawatts to deliver that 16.32 petaflops of oomph. Manufacturer: IBM Memory: 1,572,864 GB Processor: Power BQC 16C 1.6GHz Operating system: Linux

Trinity - Cray XC40

Installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, US

It is designed to provide increased computational capability for the military application of nuclear science in the US Manufacturer: Cray Inc. Processor: Intel Xeon Phi 7250 68C 1.4GHz Operating system: Cray Linux Environment.

— TOI Tech