One Of World's Largest Supercomputers Lived For Only 10 Minutes

One of the world's largest supercomputers managed to live for only 10 minutes. Developed by YellowDog, a cloud workload management (CWM) specialist from the United Kingdom, the virtual supercomputer had an extremely short life-span.

By the time it was dying, the supercomputer had clocked in the power of an astounding 3.2 million virtual CPUs (vCPUs). This means that dead supercomputer is among the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world - in the same league as Fugaku... but only for a few minutes.

Fugaku Supercomputer (Image: Riken)

The project cost about $65,000

The project was created for a pharmaceutical company, running a well-known drug discovery application as a single cluster. The raw cost of the project was put at about $65,000.

Once upon a time, supercomputers were a privilege and remained in the constrained hands of private organisations, governments, and scientific groups. With cloud computing and CWM tools, supercomputers have become accessible to all.

Also read: Vijay Pande Built World's Largest Supercomputer To Save People's Lives

According to TechRadar, the supercomputer ran for 33,333 instances of AWS 96-core c5.24xlarge instance at about $1.6013 per hour, akin to dedicated servers. The total length of the session was 65 minutes.

Fugaku Supercomputer (Image: Riken)

Colin Bridger from AWS claims that the "on-demand supercomputer" was able to analyse 337 million compounds in 7 hours. The same process would have taken two months if performed on localised systems.

Such supercomputers rely on hardware ranging from web hosting, cloud storage, and website building, among many. For perhaps the first time in history, such supercomputers are in the reach of anybody who can shell out money.

Also read: Two Indian Supercomputers Make Us Proud, Ranked 45th And 73rd In 100 Powerful Systems On Earth

Thanks to considerable achievements among CWM platforms, they can now imbibe machine learning and algorithms to perform complex functions.

CBS (Fugaku)

What do you think about supercomputers - should we all be able to get one? Share with us in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.

Citation

Athow, D. (2021, November 25). One of the world¡¯s largest supercomputers lived for only 10 minutes. TechRadar India.