Proof Point
Performance of supercomputers has grown 88% year-over-year from 170 gigaflops in 1995 to 93 petaflops in 2016, and is expected to reach 1 zettaflops peak speed by 2030
Supercomputer Performance
1995 – 2030F (gigaflops, logarithmic scale)
| Note: | FLOPS or floating-point operations per second measures the speed of microprocessors. A gigaflop is equivalent to a billion FLOPS, terraflop is a trillion FLOPS, petaflop is a quadrillion FLOPS, exaflop is a quintillion FLOPS, zettaflops is a sextillion FLOPS and a yottaflop is a septillion FLOPS. Supercomputers are used for scenario predictions because of their incredible capability to crunch numbers, they can create precise models of complex environments, such as weather pattern prediction, DNA mapping or nuclear explosion simulation |
Proof Point Findings
- Measure of Performance – FLOPS or floating-point operations per second measures the speed of microprocessors; one gigaflop is equivalent to one billion FLOPS, a terraflop is one trillion FLOPS, a petaflop is one quadrillion FLOPS, an exaflop is one quintillion FLOPS, a zettaflop is one sextillion FLOPS, and a yottaflop is one septillion FLOPS
- Supercomputer Uses – Often used for scenario predictions because of incredible capability to crunch numbers; can create precise models of complex environments, such as weather pattern prediction, DNA mapping, new drug discovery, encryption cracking or nuclear explosion simulation
- 93 Quadrillion Calculations per Second – China unveiled in 2016 world's fastest supercomputer, capable of achieving maximum processing speed of 93 petaflops
- Race to Build Exascale Supercomputers – China, Europe, Japan and the US are all pushing toward building supercomputers in the exascale range (or 1,000 petaflops) by 2020, though huge energy consumption and slowing down of chip shrinkage (i.e. limitation of Moore's Law) are seen as major barriers
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Accelerator |
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Sector |
Information Technology
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Date Last Updated |
September 9, 2016
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