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Frontier Beats Fugaku to Become The Fastest Computer In The World.

The World Fastest Computer.

By Eyitemi NurainPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Supercomputer

Supercomputers are wonderful invention that could ever happen in human history, right from helping in the modeling of various vaccine for a cure, to military use for nuclear weapon, to space launch from our favorite Elon Musk. Supercomputers have found one way or the other to impact our standard of leaving right from the 1940s since their invention. Learning how supercomputer works is a very interesting adventure and a good knowledge to have, stick with me as I explain what is a Supercomputer.

How does a Supercomputer work?

Supercomputer like the laptop and desktop in your home works by delegating certain tasks called instructions to your processor, the output is thus giving back to you. Take for example you decide to open your favourite game, hmmmmm, let's ay Call of duty(Modern Warfare 4) on your PC, the mouse sends instructions to the serial mouse usb port and then to the motherboard before being sent to the brain of your computer the CPU(Central Processing Unit). Now unlike your normal computer, supercomputer sends these instructions to mutiple CPUs at a time, thus increasing the speed and versatility in the twinkle of an eye. Your computer CPU power is probably calculated in Hertz, a unit for measuring time. Supercomputer speeds are often calculated in FLOPS(floating point operations per second), a measure of the scientific calculation the CPU could process.

Why is Frontier making the Difference?

The Image of the super computer frontier.

Japan has been in the world of supercomputers since ages, when their supercomputer called RIKEN reached a terraFLOP milestone in 2006. This has prompted Japan to keep developing and promoting research and science thus leading to the creation of Fugaku, then the world fastest super computer until being overthrown recently by Frontier, a USA designed computer that beats Fugaku by crossing the exaFLOP margin. Frontier a recent supercomputer based on modern day architecture beats Fugaku, a Japanese based supercomputer built in 2014 and completeed in 2021, this shows a seven year difference before Fugaku could be overthrown. Who knows what happens next? Humanity would keep on advancing in modern day technology. Remember that your Android/IOS devices could run faster than a desktop PC designed back in the 90s.

Frontier Architecture and Technical detail.

Hold tight as we are about to go into the technical nooks and cranny of the computing world. I guess you are not a techy person, huhu, but I am going to simplify this for you. Let us begin with the understanding of basic computer hardware. A RAM( Random Access Memory) is the memory just like Sandisk Flashdrive, where your computer stores loaded applications like Microsoft Word and other software most especially the operating system once they are loaded from your Hardisk Drive. This memory is however limited to its expansion. A point where no more memory is added to your computer would make it faster, the more RAM memory your computer has the faster it becomes. When there is a limit point of memory expansion, how then could we solve the problem of our daily lives, like using computers for 3D modeling and building human proteins and DNA?

Welcome to the world of parallel computing!!!

As defined by the University of North Carolina Wilmington, it could be said that:

Parallel Computing is the study, design, and implementation of algorithms in a way as to make use of multiple processors to solve a problem. The primary purpose is the solve a problem faster or a bigger problem in the same amount of time by using more processors to share the work.

Parallel computing as opposed to your normal home computer which runs on a serial computing architecture is more expensive but at an added advantage of the speed of Flash( Favorite character Barry Allen).

More Technical details

Since Frontier was built by the US Department of Energy Oak Bridge, it is expected that Frontier could only be used by the USA for millitary, space exploration and medical research as being previously used by other computer built by them in the past. "Exa" is a word used to denote 10 raised to the power of 18th equivalent to 2 quadrillion calculation a seconds. One Exaseconds is equivalent to 32 billion years, Imagine how massive this could be.

Still More Technical details

Frontier has a computational power of about 1.1 exaflops as compared to Fugaku which is about 442 petaflops, quite lesser than the new Frontier, Frontier is also equipped with a proccessor core of 8,730,112 powered by a powerful AMD EPYC 2GHz chipset.

Summary

In summary it could be clearly seen that Fugaku has paid its dues to Frontier by lifting the trophy in 2021. If you love this article and found it entertaning, never forget to Like, Leave an Insight and Subscribe for more contents. You can buy me a coffee by using the Tip button to encouragle me to write more articles.

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About the Creator

Eyitemi Nurain

I am a Web Developer and a UX designer, a Content Writer and Social Media Manager, and a bug bounty hunter.

You can also find me on Medium for more mind blowing stories,

Click here: https://medium.com/@eyiteminurain

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