IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Supercomputers Handle Massive Tasks in Government Agencies

In the fourth video in our series about the Computer History Museum, we look at the importance of supercomputers in the public and private sectors.

Computer_History_Museum_03
It’s common for large supercomputers to comprise legions of processor cores spread along rows of equipment, like the Sequoia machine in California that has 1.6 million processor cores within 96 racks.

The Computer History Museum displays pieces of some of these massive machines from the past. 

Parts of the Cray-1 supercomputer on display exemplify the importance of supercomputers in the public and private sectors. Large companies, research labs and military agencies use supercomputers to handle complex, massive calculations and procedures, like weapons systems and scientific simulations. Supercomputers allow scientists to perform calculations and functions they wouldn’t be able to solve otherwise.