History of supercomputing

The history of supercomputing goes aback to the 1960s back a alternation of computers at Control Data Corporation (CDC) were advised by Seymour Cray to use avant-garde designs and accompaniment to accomplish above computational aiguille performance.1 The CDC 6600, arise in 1964, is about advised the aboriginal supercomputer.23

In the 1970s, Cray formed his own aggregation and application fresh approaches to apparatus architectonics produced supercomputers which bedeviled the acreage until the end of the 1980s.

While the supercomputers of the 1980s acclimated alone a few processors, in the 1990s, machines with bags of processors began to arise both in the United States and in Japan, ambience fresh computational achievement records.

By the end of the 20th century, massively alongside supercomputers with bags of "off-the-shelf" processors agnate to those begin in claimed computers were complete and bankrupt through the teraflop computational barrier.

Progress in aboriginal decade of the 21st aeon was affecting and supercomputers with over 60,000 processors appeared, and accomplished petaflop achievement levels.

History of supercomputing

The history of supercomputing goes aback to the 1960s back a alternation of computers at Control Data Corporation (CDC) were advised by Seymour Cray to use avant-garde designs and accompaniment to accomplish above computational aiguille performance.1 The CDC 6600, arise in 1964, is about advised the aboriginal supercomputer.23

In the 1970s, Cray formed his own aggregation and application fresh approaches to apparatus architectonics produced supercomputers which bedeviled the acreage until the end of the 1980s.

While the supercomputers of the 1980s acclimated alone a few processors, in the 1990s, machines with bags of processors began to arise both in the United States and in Japan, ambience fresh computational achievement records.

By the end of the 20th century, massively alongside supercomputers with bags of "off-the-shelf" processors agnate to those begin in claimed computers were complete and bankrupt through the teraflop computational barrier.

Progress in aboriginal decade of the 21st aeon was affecting and supercomputers with over 60,000 processors appeared, and accomplished petaflop achievement levels.

The beginnings: CDC in the 1960s

In 1957 a accumulation of engineers larboard Sperry Corporation to anatomy Control Abstracts Corporation (CDC) in Minneapolis, MN. Seymour Cray larboard Sperry a year afterwards to accompany his colleagues at CDC.1 In 1960 Cray completed the CDC 1604, the aboriginal solid accompaniment computer, and the fastest computer in the apple at a time back exhaustion tubes were begin in best ample computers.4

The CDC 6600 with the arrangement console

Around 1960 Cray absitively to architecture a computer that would be the fastest in the apple by a ample margin. Afterwards four years of analysis forth with Jim Thornton, and Dean Roush and about 30 added engineers Cray completed the CDC 6600 in 1964. Given that the 6600 outran all computers of the time by about 10 times, it was dubbed a supercomputer and authentic the supercomputing bazaar back one hundred computers were awash at $8 actor each.54

The 6600 acquired acceleration by "farming out" assignment to borderline accretion elements, absolution the CPU (Central Processing Unit) to action absolute data. The Minnesota FORTRAN compiler for the apparatus was developed by Liddiard and Mundstock at the University of Minnesota and with it the 6600 could sustain 500 kilo-FLOPS on accepted algebraic operations.6 In 1968 Cray completed the CDC 7600, afresh the fastest computer in the world.4 At 36 MHz, the 7600 had about three and a bisected times the alarm acceleration of the 6600, but ran decidedly faster due to added abstruse innovations.

Cray larboard CDC in 1972 to anatomy his own company.4 Two years afterwards his abandonment CDC delivered the STAR-100 which at 100 megaflops was three times they acceleration of the 7600. Forth with the Texas Instruments ASC, the STAR-100 was one of the aboriginal machines to use agent processing - the abstraction accepting been aggressive about 1964 by the APL programming language.78ould be completed.9enchmark in 1996; eventually extensive 2 teraflops.21

The Cray era: mid-1970s and 1980s

SignifFour years afterwards abrogation CDC, Cray delivered the 80 MHz Cray 1 in 1976, and it become one of the best acknowledged supercomputers in history.89 The Cray 1 was a agent processor which alien a cardinal of innovations such as chaining in which scalar and agent registers accomplish acting after-effects which can be acclimated immediately, after added anamnesis references which abate computational speed.10 The Cray X-MP (designed by Steve Chen) was appear in 1982 as a 105 MHz shared-memory alongside agent processor with more good chaining abutment and assorted anamnesis pipelines. All three amphibian point pipelines on the XMP could accomplish simultaneously.10

The Cray-2 appear in 1985 was an 8 processor aqueous cooled computer and Fluorinert was pumped through it as it operated. It performed at 1.9 gigaflops and was the world's fastest until 1990 back ETA-10G from CDC overtook it. The Cray 2 was a absolutely fresh architecture and did not use chaining and had a aerial anamnesis latency, but acclimated abundant abysmal pipelining and was ideal for problems that appropriate ample amounts of memory.10 Thecomputer application costs in developing a supercomputer should not be underestimated, as apparent by the actuality that in the 1980s the amount forcomputer application development at Cray came to according what the spent on hardware.11 That trend was partly amenable for a move abroad from the in-house, Cray Operating System to UNICOS based on Unix.11

The Cray Y-MP, additionally advised by Steve Chen, was appear in 1988 as an advance of the XMP and could accept eight agent processors at 167 MHz with a aiguille achievement of 333 megaflops per processor.10 In the backward 1980s, Cray's agreement on the use of gallium arsenide semiconductors in the Cray-3 did not succeed. Cray began to assignment on a massively alongside computer in the aboriginal 1990s, but died in a car blow in 1996 afore it could be completed.9enchmark in 1996; eventually extensive 2 teraflops.21

Massive processing: the 1990s

Significant progreThe Cray-2 which set the frontiers of supercomputing in the mid to backward 1980s had alone 8 processors. In the 1990s, supercomputers with bags of processors began to appear. Another development at the end of the 1980s was the accession of Japanese supercomputers, some of which were modeled afterwards the Cray-1.

Rear of the Paragon chiffonier assuming the bus confined and cobweb routers

The SX-3/44R was appear by NEC Corporation in 1989 and a year after becoming the fastest in the apple appellation with a 4 processor model.12 However, Fujitsu's Numerical Wind Tunnel supercomputer acclimated 166 agent processors to accretion the top atom in 1994. It had a aiguille acceleration of 1.7 gigaflops per processor.1314 The Hitachi SR2201 on the added acquired a aiguille achievement of 600 gigaflops in 1996 by application 2048 processors affiliated via a fast three dimensional batten network.151617

In the aforementioned timeframe the Intel Paragon could accept 1000 to 4000 Intel i860 processors in assorted configurations, and was ranked the fastest in the apple in 1993. The Paragon was a MIMD apparatus which affiliated processors via a aerial acceleration two dimensional mesh, acceptance processes to assassinate on abstracted nodes; communicating via the Message Passing Interface.18 By 1995 Cray was additionally aircraft massively alongside systems, e.g. the Cray T3E with over 2,000 processors, application a three dimensional torus interconnect.1920

The Paragon architectonics anon led to the Intel ASCI Red supercomputer which captivated the top supercomputing atom to the end of the 20th aeon as allotment of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative. This was additionally a mesh-based MIMD massively-parallel arrangement with over 9,000 compute nodes and able-bodied over 12 terabytes of deejay storage, but acclimated off-the-shelf Pentium Pro processors that could be begin in accustomed claimed computers. ASCI Red was the aboriginal arrangement anytime to breach through the 1 teraflop barrier on the MP-Linpack criterion in 1996; eventually extensive 2 teraflops.21

Petaflop computing in the 21st century

Significant advance was fabricated in the aboriginal decade of the 21st aeon and it was apparent that the ability of a ample cardinal of baby processors can be acclimatized to accomplish aerial performance, e.g. as in Arrangement X's use of 1,100 Apple Ability Mac G5 computers bound accumulated in the summertime of 2003 to accretion 12.25 Teraflops.22

The ability of supercomputers connected to increase, but not badly so. The Cray C90 acclimated 500 application of ability in 1991, while by 2003 the ASCI Q acclimated 3,000 kW while actuality 2,000 times faster, accretion the achievement by watt 300 fold.23

In 2004 the Earth Simulator supercomputer congenital by NEC at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) accomplished 131 teraflops, application 640 nodes, anniversary with eight proprietary agent processing chips.24

The IBM Blue Gene supercomputer architectonics begin boundless use in the aboriginal allotment of the 21st century, and 27 of the computers on the TOP500 account acclimated that architecture. The Blue Gene access is somewhat altered in that it trades processor acceleration for low ability burning so that a beyond cardinal of processors can be acclimated at air cooled temperatures. It can use over 60,000 processors, with 2048 processors "per rack", and connects them via a three-dimensional torus interconnect.25

Progress in China has been rapid, in that China placed 51st on the TOP500 account in June 2003, again 14th in November 2003 and 10th in June 2004 and again 5th during 2005, afore accepting the top atom in 2010 with the 2.5 petaflop Tianhe-I supercomputer.2627

In July 2011 the 8.1 petaflop Japanese K computer became the fastest in the apple application over 60,000 bartering scalar SPARC64 VIIIfx processors housed in over 600 cabinets. The actuality that K computer is over 60 times faster than the Earth Simulator, and that the Earth Simulator ranks as the 68th arrangement in the apple 7 years afterwards captivation the top atom demonstrates both the accelerated access in top achievement and the boundless advance of supercomputing technology worldwide.282930