Supercomputers For Control Data Corporation: History, Components, And Applications

General Discussion on Supercomputers

Discuss about the Supercomputers for Control Data Corporation.

A supercomputer is one type of computer, which is able to perform the current higher rate of operations within computers. The use of supercomputers is used for higher level of operations when compared to the general computers. The past use of supercomputers have been majorly used for their applications in science and engineering (Luu et al., 2015). The supercomputers were used in order to handle various large form of database systems or to perform greater level of computational tasks. Advances in the field of GPUs and multi-core processors have enabled the personal use of desktops and other computing devices.

There are some publicized supercomputers, which are able to operate at fast speeds as compared to other computers. This term is mostly applied to the slower computers. The most powerful computers and the largest computers are multiple computers, which are able to perform parallel processing (Hord, 2018). The supercomputers have a major role to play within the computational field. These are used for performing a wide range of computational tasks that would include weather forecasting, gas and oil exploration, molecular modelling and climate research activities.  

The supercomputers were first invented in the early 1920s in the United States with the invention of IBM tabulators at the University of Columbia. This was supplemented with a series of computers at the Control Data Corporation (CDC) that was designed by Seymour Cray. This was meant for the purpose of using innovative designs and parallelism for the purpose of achieving superior peak of computational power (Cook & Gupta, 2015). The CDC 6600, which was released in 1964 is primarily considered as the first supercomputer. Some of the earlier form of computers such as the 1954 IBM NORC, 1960 UNIVAC LARC, Atlas and the IBM 7030 Stretch were regarded as the earliest form of supercomputers.

Although the supercomputers, which were invented during the 1980s made use of few processors, the computers during the 1990s had thousands of processors. They mostly appeared within Japan and United States and thus had set newer form of computational records. There was a major progress during the 21^st century as the supercomputers had 60,000 processors that would almost reach up to the petaflop levels of performance (Anton & Boris, 2016). 

The processors within the supercomputers are mostly made up of silicon. The doping materials are mainly diffused onto the silicon in the form of transistors, capacitors, resistors and wires. The hard drive of the supercomputers is mainly composed of platinum and ruthenium. The supercomputers are mainly designed in order for their use in various organizations and enterprises that would require a massive power of computing (Wolfer, 2015). A supercomputer integrates the operational and architectural principles from the grid and parallel processing. In these kinds of processing, a process is concurrently being executed on several processors or they are distributed among the several processors. Though many of the supercomputers mainly comprise of thousands of processors, they would also contain most of the components of a characteristic computer that would include some form of peripheral devices, operating system, connectors and several applications.   

History of Supercomputers

Unlike the minicomputers and mainframe computers, the supercomputers are mainly used for performing heavy tasks such as forecasting of weather, prediction of earthquakes and various complex form of calculations. Supercomputers also help in the government sector such as passing of information through telephone lines, e-mails or radio waves and many other functions. The supercomputer is mainly associated with the fastest computer that is available or that would have a large size (Okrepilov et al., 2015).

The construction of supercomputers is an expensive task. Transporting of the machine would take several years. The use of supercomputers could be expensive. The users of supercomputers are mainly charged based on the time of usage of the system that would be expressed in the number of processor seconds (Hart et al., 2014).

Supercomputers play a major role in the success of the field of population genetics. This is one of the application of supercomputers. This field has mostly became essential within the foundation of the modern form of evolutionary synthesis.

Population Genetics could be defined as the study of interaction and frequency based on genes and alleles within population. This study would also be able to define the allele frequency distribution changes as a result of the processes of evolution that includes mutation, genetic drift and natural selection. In the last decades, there has been several major changes within the field of population genetics (Dumancas, 2015). This has mainly been possible with the latest form of developments based on the technologies of DNA sequencing. The present and the future form of challenges within the particular field in both analytical theory and computer methodology are mainly meant to develop techniques and models for extracting the most possible information from DNA datasets.

Supercomputers have played a major role within the success of population genetics. This has been made possible with the large genomic datasets, which have recently emerged with the help of sophisticated supercomputers (Yang et al., 2014). These are necessary in order to discover the genetics of several different species. At a point of time when the information of population density would be provided in the future, the supercomputers would be able to perform many type of complex computations. Supercomputers are also used for the analysis of different sets of data within the genetic based on human population.

The use of supercomputing within the industry of population genetics. The use of this form of computing has evolved over the last couple of years (Gonzalez-Garay, 2014). Several number of computational tools have evolved over the years and have hence facilitated the various forms of advances within the field of research in population genetics. The various centres of supercomputing that are situated all over the world facilitates the deep analysis of large datasets based on genetics in order to understand the history of genetics and the organization of different populations of organism.

The Major Components of Supercomputers

The large and complex sets of genomic data have presented various kinds of problems within the population genetics. These problems were mainly obtained within the statistical inferences.  With the several large sets of data volumes that are obtained from extensive research, there would be a high need for the proper form of development of new form of algorithms related to bioinformatics (Pinel, Dorronsoro & Bouvry, 2013). The community of bioinformatics have developed several advanced form of algorithms for the proper analysis of generic based data that would be based on symmetric multiprocessing systems of computing, which would require large amounts of RAM within the supercomputers.  

Supercomputing has played a major role within several industrial fields such as aeronautics, civil engineering, electronic engineering and also within the field of pharmaceutics. The supercomputers are regarded as those form of computers that have higher performance of magnitude. In the trends of the future, some of the much needed architectures would be implemented within the systems of supercomputers. There is a high need for the government to make sure that the suppliers would be able to meet with the national needs. The future of supercomputing could be able to define the way of conceive of big data within the various organizations and the way of processing of complex calculations and data. The future of supercomputers might contain 160 terabytes of memory and a newer form of architecture, which would be able to break the previous systems that were created with the help of processor based supercomputers (Brodtkorb, Hagen & Sætra, 2013).

The next advancement within the future trends of supercomputing could be based on memory-driven computing that would be able to move the industry forward. They would be able to enhance the future of supercomputer technology. The unveiled architecture could also be applied to every category of computing that could range from intelligent edge device till the supercomputers.   

The future trends of supercomputers could also be helpful in calculating the appropriate medical treatments on the personalized needs of the users. The supercomputers could also be able to predict the extreme events of weather such as predictions of weather, hurricanes and also it would be able to perform them high level of acute accuracy, effective and quicker form of responses.   

Conclusion

Based on the discussion from the above discussion, it could be concluded that the use of supercomputing has shown enormous growth within the computing of various organizations in several countries. The technology has been if great importance because it was responsible for major form of advances within several crucial aspects. Supercomputing has also played major roles within national defences and also within scientific discoveries. The ability for the addressing of crucial engineering and security challenges would mostly depend on continued form of investments within the area of supercomputing. 

References

Anton, R., & Boris, R. (2016, September). An information-theoretic approach to performance evaluation of supercomputers. In Problems of Redundancy in Information and Control Systems (REDUNDANCY), 2016 XV International Symposium (pp. 125-128). IEEE.

Brodtkorb, A. R., Hagen, T. R., & Sætra, M. L. (2013). Graphics processing unit (GPU) programming strategies and trends in GPU computing. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 73(1), 4-13.

Cook, J. S., & Gupta, N. (2015). History of Supercomputing and Supercomputer Centers. In Research and Applications in Global Supercomputing (pp. 33-55). IGI Global.

Dumancas, G. G. (2015). Applications of Supercomputers in Population Genetics. In Research and Applications in Global Supercomputing (pp. 176-200). IGI Global.

Gonzalez-Garay, M. L. (2014). The road from next-generation sequencing to personalized medicine. Personalized medicine, 11(5), 523-544.

Hart, A., Richardson, H., Doleschal, J., Ilsche, T., Bielert, M., & Kappel, M. (2014). User-level power monitoring and application performance on cray xc30 supercomputers. Proceedings of the Cray User Group (CUG).

Hord, R. M. (2018). Parallel Supercomputing in MIMD Architectures: 0. CRC press.

Luu, H., Winslett, M., Gropp, W., Ross, R., Carns, P., Harms, K., ... & Yao, Y. (2015, June). A multiplatform study of I/O behavior on petascale supercomputers. In Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (pp. 33-44). ACM.

Okrepilov, V. V., Makarov, V. L., Bakhtizin, A. R., & Kuzmina, S. N. (2015). Application of supercomputer technologies for simulation of socio-economic systems. R-Economy. 2015. Vol. 1. Iss. 2, 1(2), 340-350.

Pinel, F., Dorronsoro, B., & Bouvry, P. (2013). Solving very large instances of the scheduling of independent tasks problem on the GPU. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 73(1), 101-110.

Wolfer, J. (2015, March). A heterogeneous supercomputer model for high-performance parallel computing pedagogy. In Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2015 IEEE (pp. 799-805). IEEE.

Yang, C., Li, H., Rezgui, Y., Petri, I., Yuce, B., Chen, B., & Jayan, B. (2014). High throughput computing based distributed genetic algorithm for building energy consumption optimization. Energy and Buildings, 76, 92-101.