SUPERCOMPUTERS

Made By:

Zaid Makani (347)

Sana Arora (306)
Saurabh Kasliwal (338)
Chandraveer Singh Deora (315)
AGENDA
 WHAT ARE SUPERCOMPUTERS?

 Supercomputers : The most powerful computers

 An array of computers
 Supercomputers ahead of every other computer in the speed
of calculation
 Solve complicated and massive problems
 Some are single computers containing multiple processors
and others are clusters of computers that work together
 HISTORY OF SUPERCOMPUTERS

 Introduced in 1960->developed in 1970

 Seymour Cray introduced the “Cray 1” supercomputer
 Consisted of individual integrated circuits
 Companies like IBM, NEC, Texas Instruments and Unisys
were next
 First supercomputers reached speeds of 10 to 100 million
FLOPS (Floating point operations per second)
 BACKGROUND OF SUPERCOMPUTERS

 Earlier, belonged to the province of large government

agencies
 Small production->export controlled
 Initial idea developed by IBM in 1960
 Motive: Linking large mainframes to provide parallelism
 Gained momentum in 1980 with convergence of 3 trends: 1.
High performance microprocessors

2. High-speed networks
3. Standard tools for high performance computing
 CONTD..

 Technologists built supercomputers which had:

*Ability to tackle the OS and software problems

*Increased peripheral speeds

*High-speed communications
 LITERATURE SURVEY

 The first supercomputer: ZUSE Z1

 Introduced by Konrad Zuse
 Contained control unit, memory, micro sequences, floating
point logic ,Boolean logic unit and input/output devices
 The input and output were in decimal with a decimal
exponent
 Consisted of a keyboard for input and flashing lights
indicated results
 Electric motor ->clock frequency of 1 Hz
 SUPERCOMPUTER ARCHITECTURES

PIPELINING:
 Instruction fetch
 Instruction decode

and register fetch

 Execute
 Memory access
 Register write back
SHARED ADDRESS SPACE PARALLELISM

 Two programming paradigms: Message passing and

Shared address space
 Message Passing:

*Advantage: Simpler approach

* Disadvantage: Developing code is difficult

 Shared address space :

*Advantage: Easy coding

*Disadvantage: Performance is limited

 DISTRIBUTED MEMORY
(MULTI COMPUTER)

 Each processor has its own private memory

 Tasks are distributed to the different processors for

processing

 Data then reassembled

 Network topologies for connection: ring, mesh, tree

 Each node has access to a large shared memory + limited

non-shared private memory
 VECTOR OR SIMD

 Employed to achieve data level

parallelism

 Single Control Unit sends decoded

instructions to multiple processing units

 Processing on distinct data streams

 SIMD instructions handle the data

manipulation only.
 SPMD MODEL

 Use: To achieve parallelism

 Categorized under MIMD

 Tasks split up and run simultaneously on multiple

processors

 Inputs differ to obtain faster results

 Prerequisite for research concepts such as active

memory
 WORKING OF A SUPERCOMPUTER

 Work through multiprocessing

 Time taken to finish task is very less
 When the supercomputer needs more power more
processors(nodes) are added
 Concept of MIMD is applied
 Speed may increase by maximum two orders of
magnitude
CONTD..
 NOVO-G: FOREFRONT OF
RECONFIGURABLE SUPERCOMPUTING

 Reconfigurable computing: Architecture adapts to the

need of application
 Scalable systems with 192 processors rival speeds of
large supercomputers
 Primary emphasis:

*Performance

*Productivity

*Impact
 CONTD…

Reconfigurable logic devices more beneficial over fixed logic

devices
Novo-G forum established: Realization of promise of
reconfigurable supercomputing
Offers a broad and growing range of academic and
communication tools
 ENIAC

 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator

 Initial Supercomputer for fast calculation
 First developed in 1949
 Purpose: A solution for the scientific problems of the
whole nation
 Use: military purposes
 Features:
*consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power
* covered 1800 square feet
* weighed 30 tons
 CONTD..

 The ENIAC contained:

• No. of vacuum tubes: 17,468
• No. of resistors: 70,000
• No. of capacitors: 10,000
• No. of relays: 1,500
• No. of manual switches: 6,000
 LATEST FASTEST
SUPERCOMPUTER:TIANHE-1A

 Built by a Chinese scientific research center

 Invented by the National University of Defense Technology
in China
 Fastest supercomputer
 2.67 quadrillions of computing operations per second
 COMPUTING POWER OF TIANHE-1A:
*1 PF(Peta Flop)= 1,000 trillion calculations per sec
* Computing power of 175,000 laptops
 CONTD..

 The Tianhe-1A system consists of:

• 112 computer cabinets
• 12 storage cabinets
• 6 communications cabinets
• 8 I/O cabinets
• Computer cabinet-> four frames
• Frame->eight blades +16-port switching board
• Blade-> two computer nodes
 CONTD..

 PERSPECTIVE AND SYSTEM

SPEC’S:
• 1 second on a PC=10 hours
on Tianhe-1A
• 1 min=25 days
• 1 hour=4 years
• 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs
• It costs $88 million USD
 ADVANTAGES OF
SUPERCOMPUTERS:

 Handle large, real-world problems

 Incredibly fast
 Multitasking without reducing its speed
 Better graphics designing and efficient performance
 Used in human genome sequencing and credit card
transaction processing
 Helps in the design and testing of modern aircraft
 DISADVANTAGES OF
SUPERCOMPUTERS:

 Incredibly expensive
 Huge power consumption
 Heat generated is immense
 Shorter lifetime
 Compatibility issues with some softwares
 Cannot operate without proper climate control
 Sensitive to climatic changes
 WHAT ARE THEY USED FOR?
Climate prediction & Computational Crash analysis
Weather forecasting Chemistry

Cryptography Nuclear simulation Structural analysis

 APPLICATIONS OF SUPERCOMPUTERS

CLIMATE PREDICTION:

 Variables: reflectivity of the surface

of the earth, vagaries of ocean
currents.
 Wind speed, air temperature and
 pressure is collected to track the
hurricane
 Data is fed into a supercomputer
which predicts the change
 Useful after a storm

 MODELING SWINE FLU

 Invention of an advanced model to predict how the

flu would be transmitted
 Structure of swine flu virus unraveled
 Drug resistance through mutations
 Results : virus was still not resistant but would be
soon
 Described by the report by the TeraGrid computing
resources center
 TESTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS

 Performance of non-nuclear lab tests and computer

simulations
 Sequoia:

* a new supercomputer to be generated

* twenty thousand trillion calculations each second

* prime directive: Create better simulations of nuclear

explosions
 BUILDING BRAINS

 Models the nervous system

 The blue brain project: Simulation of a
10,000-neuron chunk of a rat brain
 Purpose: To build a complete working
model of the human brain
 A working neural circuit
 Replication is difficult and can take very
long
 THE BIG BANG THEORY

 Universe: hot and dense state which

gradually expanded
 Supercomputers predict events 13 billion
years ago
 Develop the sham of the first galaxy
 Emphasize on creation of stars from
cosmic dust and gas
 Answer unseen and unanswered queries
 HOW DO THEY DIFFER FROM A
PERSONAL COMPUTER?
 Cost
*Range: $100,000s-$1,000,000s
 Environment
*Environmentally controlled rooms
 Peripherals
*lack sound cards, graphic boards, keyboards, etc.
*accessed via workstation or PC
 Programming language
*FORTRAN
 GRID COMPUTING VS SUPERCOMPUTING

Supercomputers :
 Many CPU’s connected by a high speed local computer bus
Advantage :
1. Node can be bought as commodity hardware
2. Lower cost
 Disadvantage:
1. Local storage areas do not have high speed connections
2. Physical challenges in supplying electricity and cooling capacity in one single location
3. expensive and difficult to write programs
 CONTD..

Grid Computing:
 On board CPU of complete computers connected by a network interface
 Advantage:

1. High end scalability of grids dispersed geographically is well suited and

favorable

2. need for connectivity is less between nodes relative to the capacity of the
internet
 Disadvantage: Data is less secure
 Differ in programming considerations and infra structure
 FUTURE ENHANCEMENT

 Development of 3d simulation programs to conduct

research
 Future includes assembly of the next generation of
computational research infrastructure
 Introduction of new supercomputing architectures
 Ways in which the components of a parallel computer can
be assembled
 Development to institutions to share their discoveries
 Proficiency at parallel processing
 CONCLUSION

 The working of super computers has always been intriguing.

 They have brought revolutionary changes in the fields of medicine and human
body.
 Cures of many diseases have been detected and set up because of research
through supercomputers.
 Research on many fatal diseases, like cancer and AIDS is still being done.
 Testing of weapons, especially nuclear ones can have catastrophic effects on our
environment.
 By simulating these weapons on the super computers, we can get our desired
results, without radio-active effects!
 The first computer, consisted of vacuum tubes and operated entire rooms, which
had to be kept chilled to prevent them overheating. Data was inserted using
punched cards. From there on, there was no looking back.
 The advancements in the field of supercomputing is going on till date and
hopefully with wider applications it will transform the lives of all.
 REFERENCES

 Sites visited:
• www.technewsdaily.com
• http://www.cio.com.au/article/132504/brief_hist
ory_supercomputers
• www. Webopedia.com
• www.compinfocenter.com/server/supercomputer
s.htm

 Books referred to:

• On the effects of Memory Latency and Bandwidth
on a supercomputer application performance,
Richard Murphy, Sandia National Laboratories.
THANK YOU