Lecture 2 Introduction to comruter system. Architecture of computer system.

OUTLINE Types of high-performance computers Supercomputer architecture and design Quantum computers

Types of high-performance computers Supercomputer Quantum computers Vector supercomputers Cluster calculators

Supercomputer architecture and design HISTORY First supercomputer built by Seymour Cray in Control Data Corporation (CDC) in 1957 Currently, there are supercomputers that exceed 1000 TFLOPS; the first having been built by IBM in 2008

FEATURES More than one CPU necessitated by physical limits of circuit technology Large storage capacity Very fast input/output capability Cryogenic fluids are used for cooling Linux and Unix are the most commonly used operating systems Fortran is the language most preferred for scientific programming

ARCHITECTURE Most supercomputers are clusters of MIMD multiprocessors, each processor of which is SIMD A SIMD processor executes the same instruction on more than one set of data at the same time MIMD is employed to achieve parallelism, by using a number of processors that function asynchronously and independently

APPLICATIONS fluid dynamics weather patterns seismic activity prediction nuclear explosion dynamics human genome sequencing credit card transaction processing design and testing of modern aircraft molecular modeling cryptology Supercomputers are used to perform the most compute-intensive tasks of modern times

First computer to defeat a world champion!! Garry Kasparov Deep Blue In February 1996, IBMs Deep Blue defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov. It was then assigned to predict the weather in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games

MANUFACTURERS IBM Aspen Systems SGI Cray Research Compaq Hewlett-Packard Thinking Machines Cray Computer Corporation Control Data Corporation

Cray-1 IBM Roadrunner

Quantum computers What is a quantum computer? A quantum computer is a machine that performs calculations based on the laws of quantum mechanics, which is the behavior of particles at the sub- atomic level.

Quantum Computing Problems Current technology 40 Qubit operating machine needed to rival current classical equivalents. Errors Decoherence - the tendency of a quantum computer to decay from a given quantum state into an incoherent state as it interacts with the environment. Interactions are unavoidable and induce breakdown of information stored in the quantum computer resulting in computation errors. Error rates are typically proportional to the ratio of operating time to decoherence time operations must be completed much quicker than the decoherence time.