Top 10 Most Expensive Supercomputers

10. IBM Roadrunner (US): The Roadrunner was built by IBM for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. It became operational in 2008, and was designed for a peak performance of 1.7 petaFLOPS. On May 25, 2008, it achieved PFLOPS, becoming the world’s first TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops system. It eventually reached a top performance of PFLOPS in November of the same year, retaining its top spot on the TOP500 list. 9. Vulcan BlueGene/Q (US): Vulcan is a 24-rack supercomputer system that was created by IBM for the DoE and is stationed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. It has a 5 PetaFLOPS peak, and is currently the ninth fastest supercomputer in the world, according to . It is also used in support of DoE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) missions. 8. SuperMUC (Germany): it is the second-fastest supercomputer in Germany. SuperMUC is operated by the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. The system was created by IBM, operates on Linux, contains over 19,000 Intel and Westmere-EX processors, and has a peak performance of a little over 3 PFLOPS. It has a unique cooling system, called Aquasar, which uses hot water to cool the processors. 7. Trinity (US):The US government offered supercomputer manufacturers Cray a $174 million contract to build this Cray XC supercomputer, along with a Cray Sonexion storage system for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Trinity will be used to keep America’s nuclear arsenal secure, safe, and effective. 6. Sequoia BlueGene/Q (US): The petascale BlueGene/Q supercomputer Sequoia was developed by IBM, again for the NNSA, as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. It currently sits in the number three spot, with a theoretical peak of 20 PFLOPS, or 20 trillion calculations per second. 5. ASC Purple and BlueGene/L (US): These two supercomputers came as a pack. The two computers were announced by the DoE in 2002 to be contracted out to IBM for $290 million. They were installed in 2005 in the Lawrence Livermore Lab, and were decommissioned in 2010. 4. Sierra and Summit (US): Nvidia and IBM will soon help America to reclaim its top position in supercomputer speeds, tech breakthroughs, scientific research, and economic and national security. Built using IBM Power Servers and Nvidia Tesla GPU accelerators, the two supercomputers dubbed Sierra and Summit will be installed in 2017. 3. Tianhe-2 (China): As mentioned above, China’s Tianhe-2 (translated to “Milky Way-2” in English) is the world’s fastest current supercomputer. Tianhe-2 was developed by a team of 1,300 scientists and engineers, and it is located in National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou. ince 2013 it has consecutively ranked #1 on TOP500’s list of fastest supercomputers. Tianhe-2 is able to perform 33,860 trillion calculations per second. 2. Earth Simulator (Japan): The Earth Simulator (quite the ominous name) was developed by the Japanese government way back in 1997. The project cost 60 billion yen, or roughly $500 million in today’s economy. ES was the fastest supercomputer in the world from 2002 to 2004. 1. Fujitsu K (Japan): In 2011, TOP500 ranked K the world’s fastest supercomputer, and in November 2011 the system became the first computer to top 10 PFLOPS officially. The K computer, located at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, is 60 times faster than the Earth Simulator. K costs $10 million a year to operate, using MW of power. IMAGE SOURCE: “GOOGLE SEARCH“ SOURCE: