What makes a supercomputer so super ? Can it jump off marvelous buildings in a single reverberate or protect the rights of the innocent ? The the true is a bit more mundane . supercomputer can process complex calculation very quickly .
As it turn out , that ’s the secret behind figure office . It all get down to how fast a machine can perform an cognitive operation . Everything a reckoner does breaks down into math . Your computer ’s processor interprets any command you execute as a series of math problems . Faster processor can treat more calculation per 2d than slower ace , and they ’re also salutary at handle really tough calculations .
Within your figurer ’s C.P.U. is an electronic clock . The clock ’s job is to make a series of electric pulses at regular intervals . This allows the computer to synchronize all its components and it see the pep pill at which the calculator can pull datum from its memory and perform calculation .
When you talk about how many GHz your C.P.U. has , you ’re really talking aboutclock swiftness . The number have-to doe with to how many electrical pulses your CPU sends out each second . A 3.2 gigacycle CPU sends out around 3.2 billion pulses each 2nd . While it ’s possible to promote some central processing unit to speed quicker than their advertised limits – a process calledoverclocking– eventually a clock will bump off its limit and will go no faster .
As of March 2010 , the record for processing power goes to a Cray XT5 computer called Jaguar . The Jaguar supercomputer can action up to 2.3 quadrillion calculations per second [ germ : National Center for Computational Sciences ] .
computing machine performance can also be measure infloating - point operations per second , orflops . Current desktop figurer have central processor that can treat billions of float - pointedness operations per second , or gigaflops . computing gadget with multiple central processing unit have an advantage over single - processor machines , because each processor core can treat a certain bit of calculations per second . Multiple - core processors increase cipher baron while using less electricity [ source : Intel ]
Even fast computer can take age to fill out certain tasks . Finding two prime factors of a very big act is a difficult task for most computers . First , the computer must ascertain the factors of the with child number . Then , the computer must determine if the factors are premier numbers . For incredibly large numbers , this is a operose task . The calculations can take a computer many years to complete .
succeeding computers may find out such a project comparatively simple . A work quantum reckoner of sufficient baron could calculate factors in parallel and then provide the most likely result in just a few moments . However , quantum computers have their own challenges and would n’t be suitable for all computing task , but they could reshape the way we think of computing power .
hear more about computers and processors by following the links on the next page .
