10 most powerful supercomputers in the world today

Supercomputers are specialized machines that can perform calculations at much faster speeds than standard computers. They provide a level of performance that allows governments and organizations to solve problems that are impossible with regular computers.

Illustration photo.

They are used in a wide range of fields, including scientific research, weather forecasting, financial analysis, physics simulations, and oil and gas exploration, and supercomputers have helped scientists discover more durable building materials and study human proteins and cellular systems in extreme detail.

In this article, we will learn about the 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world today.

1. Fugaku Supercomputer (Japan)

Fugaku is currently the world's most powerful supercomputer, located at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. This supercomputer was developed by Japanese semiconductor, computer and communications research and development company Fujitsu, with a theoretical peak performance of up to 537 petaflops, that is 537 quadrillion calculations per second (petaflops is a unit of computing power, equivalent to 1 quadrillion calculations per second).

Fugaku is also the first supercomputer powered by ARM processors, a new type of microprocessor technology that uses simpler, less energy-consuming processing methods. According to the HPCG performance evaluation standard, Fugaku's performance surpasses the combined performance of the next four top supercomputers in the world.

It's a major achievement for the Japanese government, but designing such a powerful system isn't cheap. Since 2014, the government has spent about $1 billion on research and development (R&D) and application development for the project.

Fugaku runs on two parallel operating systems, Linux and a multi-core operating system called IHK/McKernel. Linux handles services compatible with the portable operating system interface (POSIX), while McKernel runs high-performance simulations.

It is designed to solve high-priority scientific and societal problems, such as weather forecasting, clean energy development, drug development, precision medicine, and discovering the laws of quantum mechanics.

2. Summit Supercomputer (USA)

Summit is currently the second most powerful supercomputer in the world, located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA. This supercomputer was developed by the cooperation of multinational computer technology corporation IBM and multinational corporation, specializing in developing graphics processors and chipset technology for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices NVIDIA of the US and has a processing power of 200 petaflops.

During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the US Department of Energy used the Summit supercomputer to boost its technological power to search for a cure for Covid-19. The power of this supercomputer can help speed up the process of inhibiting or attacking the virus.

The Summit supercomputer is equipped with an “artificial intelligence brain” that can analyze countless simulations to determine which drug combinations can prevent the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) from attacking cells.

The supercomputer is used for research in a variety of fields, including physics, energy, and healthcare. Summit has also aided in Alzheimer's research, analyzed genes that may be linked to opioid addiction, and predicted dangerous weather based on climate simulations.

3. Sierra Supercomputer (USA)

Sierra is the third most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA. Developed by IBM and NVIDIA, the machine has a processing power of 125 petaflops. It is used for research in various fields, including nuclear weapons and climate change.

The Sierra supercomputer delivers 6x more sustained performance and 7x more workload performance than its predecessor, the Sequoia supercomputer. It combines two types of processing chips: IBM's Power 9 processors and NVIDIA's Volta GPUs.

Sierra is specifically designed to evaluate the performance of nuclear weapons systems, predictive applications in stockpile management, reliability testing programs, and maintenance of U.S. nuclear weapons without any nuclear testing.

4. Sunway TaihuLight Supercomputer (China)

Sunway TaihuLight is currently the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, China. Developed by the China National Research Center for Computer Science and Engineering, the supercomputer has a processing power of 93 petaflops. It is used for research in various fields, including climate modeling and Earth system science.

The computing power of Sunway TaihuLight comes from the self-produced multi-core SW26010 central processing unit (CPU) which includes both computing processing elements and management processing elements.

A single SW26010 CPU delivers peak performance of over 3 teraflops thanks to 260 compute elements (integrated into a single CPU). Each compute element has a user-controlled cache memory, significantly reducing memory congestion in most applications.

In addition to supporting life science and pharmaceutical research, TaihuLight has been used to simulate the universe. However, China is trying to achieve more than that, with the country declaring its goal of becoming a world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030.

5. Tianhe-2A Supercomputer (China)

Tianhe-2A is the world's fifth most powerful supercomputer. It is located at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China. Developed by China's National University of Defense Technology, the supercomputer has a processing power of 61 petaflops.

China spent 2.4 billion yuan (about $390 million) to build the supercomputer, which is currently used mainly for simulation applications, analyzing government security-related issues, and researching materials science and engineering.

6. Frontera Supercomputer (USA)

Frontera is currently the 6th most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Texas, USA. This supercomputer was developed by the US computer technology corporation Dell and has a processing power of 23.5 petaflops.

Frontera opens up new possibilities in engineering and research by providing scalable computational resources that make it easier for scientists to tackle complex challenges across multiple fields.

Frontera has two compute systems: The first focuses on double-precision performance while the second focuses on single-precision stream memory computing. It also integrates a cloud computing interface and multiple application nodes to host virtual servers.

The Frontera supercomputer is used for research in a variety of fields, including particle physics and earth sciences.

7.SupercomputerPiz Daint (Switzerland)

Piz Daint is the 7th most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center. It was developed by supercomputer manufacturer Cray, based in Seattle, Washington, USA, and has a processing power of 21.2 petaflops.

The Piz Daint supercomputer, named after the Piz Daint mountain in the Swiss Alps, runs on Intel Xeon E5-26xx processors and NVIDIA Tesla P100.

The supercomputer is used for research in a variety of fields, including materials science and fluid dynamics. It can also handle data analysis for some of the world's most data-intensive projects, such as data collected from experiments at the world's largest particle accelerator in Switzerland.

8. Trinity Supercomputer (USA)

Trinity is currently the 8th most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. This supercomputer was also developed by supercomputer manufacturer Cray and has a processing power of 20.2 petaflops.

The Trinity supercomputer was built to provide extraordinary computing power to the US National Nuclear Security Administration. It aims to improve the geometric and physical accuracy of nuclear weapons simulation codes and ensure that nuclear stockpiles are safe, secure and efficient. The supercomputer is also used for research in other areas such as energy and climate modeling.

9. AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure Supercomputer (Japan)

AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructureis the ninth most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tokyo, Japan. It was developed by Fujitsu Semiconductor, Computer and Communications Research and Development Company and has a processing power of 19.9 petaflops.

AI Supercomputer Bridging Cloud Infrastructureused for research in many different fields, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

10. SuperMUC-NG supercomputer

SuperMUC-NG is the 10th most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is located at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center in Germany. The supercomputer was developed by the multinational computer technology corporation Lenovo and has a processing power of 19.5 petaflops.

The SuperMUC-NG supercomputer serves European scientists in a wide range of fields, including genome analysis, fluid dynamics, cosmic fundamental force analysis, life sciences, medicine and astrophysics.

According to a report by market research firm Technavio (UK), the global supercomputer market will grow to $12.5 billion from 2021 to 2025, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% during the forecast period.

The growing use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud technology is a major reason behind this growth. The need for highly complex models to solve complex physical, chemical and environmental problems could accelerate the growth.

Overall, with increasingly complex applications in the near future, the demand for supercomputers will increase accordingly. Government organizations are expected to be the end users generating the highest revenue./.