WHAT IS THE MOST POWERFUL SUPERCOMPUTER IN THE WORLD?
Frotiere is the first exascale supercomputer. This means that it is a computing system capable of at least one exaflop or a billion- billion calculations per second (1018)
We were heralded into a new era of computational capability in May 2022 as the U.S. retook the top spot in the race to build the world's fastest supercomputer. Capable of billion billion operations per second, Frontier is the first exascale supercomputer. This means that it is a computing system capable of at least one exaflop or a billion billion calculations per second (1018).
Different level
The fastest supercomputers that were in existence before the Frontier came into being are still in the petascale, capable of quadrillion (1015) calculations per second. By reaching quintillion (1018) operations per second, Frontier has taken computing to a whole new level.
Built by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, the Frontier was able to demonstrate a processor speed of 1.102 exaflops in a benchmarking test called the High-Performance Linpack (HPL).
Faster than the fastest
Frontier took the place of being the world's fastest supercomputer from Japanese supercomputer Fugaku. Fugaku had held the position for two years having scored 415.5 petaflops in the HPL benchmark. At that time, it was thrice as fast as the machine it had ousted - the Summit supercomputer built by IBM, also housed at ORNL.
The progress in this field has been rapid in the last few years as computer scientists worldwide had been working towards surmounting the exascale barrier. The exascale milestone represents a new level of computational power capable of calculating solutions to highly complex problems. Be it climate systems, new kinds of materials and medicines, or even some of the deepest questions of humankind, exascale devices such as the Frontier can efficiently process vast amounts of data.
This incredible machine, which was built at a cost of $600 million, is undoubtedly the most advanced computer currently on Earth. The unmatched capabilities of Frontier as a tool for scientific discovery will surely unlock new frontiers of knowledge.
Picture Credit : Google