The beginning of the world's most powerful supercomputer!

In fact, although the primary use of supercomputers started in 1964, the very first programmable and digitized computer was ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer).  It was first formally established on 15 February 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.  The then US government spent about $500,000 to design and build it.  In fact, in terms of technology, America has advanced far ahead of any country in the world by at least 50 years.

Currently, a German-based think tank called Top500 researches the most powerful and high-tech supercomputers in the world.  In June 2024, their Top500 website published a ranking of the world's best high-tech and 500 most powerful supercomputers.  Since 1993, the organization has been regularly publishing an updated ranking of the top global high-speed supercomputers twice a year (in June and November).

According to the updated (63rd edition) list of the Top-500 website, the world's best and most powerful supercomputer is the US 'Frontier' supercomputer.  Moreover, a total of 5 high-tech high-speed supercomputers from America, 1 from Japan, 1 from Finland, 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Italy and 1 from Spain have been placed in the ranking of the top 10 supercomputers in the world.  In the last 2023 list of the world's top 10 supercomputers, two Chinese supercomputers were placed in the list of the top ten in the current 63rd edition of 2024.

From last year 2022 to June 2024, the world's best and top local number one supercomputer is the United States' 'Frontier' Highly Advanced Supercomputing System.  Basically, the speed of the new generation 'frontier' advanced computing system or supercomputer made by the American Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP) company is 1,714.81 petaflops (FLOPS) or floating point operations per second (FLOPS) per second (Rpeak).

The highly advanced 'frontier' supercomputing system has so far achieved the milestone of 1.1 quintillion calculations per second.  It has been installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in America.  The total number of cores of this supercomputer is 8,699,904.  AMD Optimized Third Generation (EPYC) 64C 2GHz processor is used in it.

The total cost of setting up this supercomputer spread over an area of ​​680 square meters has been around 600 million to 700 million dollars.  All its high-tech parts, devices and kits are installed in a total of 74 cabins and each cabin weighs about 4 tons.  This supercomputer was installed in the year 2021 but it started to be used effectively from May 2022.  It requires about 22.7 MW of electricity to operate overall.

Until June 2022, the world's best and most powerful supercomputer was Japan's highly advanced 'Fukagu' supercomputer.  The US-made 'Frontier' supercomputer took its rightful place as the world's most powerful supercomputing system in June 2022.  A total of 171 supercomputers in America, 80 in China and 40 in Germany and a total of 29 in Japan have been placed in this updated top 500 list.

However, in the June 2024 top-500 list, the American-made Aurora supercomputer, ranked second, has a speed of 1,980.01 petaflops (FLOPS) per second (Rpeak) and a total number of 92,46,128 cores.  It is designed and manufactured by the American tech giant HPE Corporation.  Moreover, the famous American Microsoft Corporation has developed the third top local supercomputer "Eagle" in the world.  Its speed is 846.84 petaflops per second (Rpeak) rate (FLOPS) and the total number of cores is 20,73,600.

This time, the supercomputer 'Fukagu' made by Japan's 'Fujitsu' company is in the fourth place.  Its data computing speed rate is 537.21 peta flops (FLOPS).  Which Japan developed in 2020 and unveiled to the world.  Moreover, Finland's HPE company, which ranks fifth in this elite list, unveiled the super fast 'Lumi' supercomputer in 2023.  AMD Optimized Third Generation (EPYC) 64C 2GHz processor is used.  Its speed or data processing capacity is 428.7 petaflops (FLOPS).

Meanwhile, Switzerland-made Alps supercomputer in sixth place has a speed of 353.75 petaflops per second (Rpeak) and a total number of 13,05,600 cores.  The Italian-made super fast computer 'Leonardo' is ranked seventh in the list with a speed of 304.47 petaflops.  But it was installed in early 2023.

Meanwhile, in terms of high-tech super-fast supercomputer innovation, the red giant China has progressed a lot, although it is a little less strong than the United States.  In the current 2023 61st edition of the top-500 list, China's own technology 'Sunway Taihulite' supercomputer, ranked 13th, had a speed of 125.44 petaflops per second (FLOPS).  Moreover, another Chinese supercomputer on the 16th place and 'Tianhe-2A' series supercomputer has shown a speed of 100.68 petaflops per second (FLOPS).

According to the current data of June 2024, India's AIRAWAT supercomputer has been ranked as the 110th supercomputer among the world's top 500 fastest supercomputers.  Its speed is 13.17 petaflops (Rpeak) and its number of cores is 81,344.  This series of advanced supercomputers were originally designed and developed by Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) based in Pune, India.

However, the first high-speed supercomputer in the history of mankind was designed and built in 1964 in the United States.  The CDC-6600 series supercomputer made by the country's Control Data Corporation is actually the world's first successful supercomputer.  It was originally designed by Seymour Carey.  The CDC-6600 series of supercomputers used 400,000 transistors and nearly 100 miles of cable.  It was designed to process around 3 million instructions per second.  Its per unit cost was around $2.4 million at the time.  Its data processing capacity or speed was 3 megaFLOPS per second.