China remains supercomputer superpower number 1

China remains supercomputer superpower number one

Fastest computer comes from Guangzhou, China

As supercomputer, the fastest computer of its time be designated. It does not matter on which construction of computer based. A typical feature of a modern supercomputer is its large number of processors that can access shared peripherals and a partially shared memory.

In the list of the fastest supercomputers in the world ranking for the fourth time in a row China's "Tianhe-2" ("Milky Way") to score number one. Built in Guangzhou plant comes on a computing power of 33.86 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second). 

The fastest supercomputer in the world: "Tianhe-2"

Speed Master "Piz Daint" from Switzerland

Europe's fastest computer is in Switzerland. "Piz Daint" in Lugano on the Swiss National Supercomputing Center of the American manufacturer Cray delivers a performance of 6.27 petaflops. Overall, published twice a year list of top 500 lists 130 systems from Europe - in June there were 116.

 

Most systems in the United States

The United States operate more traditionally by far the most super computer, even if the number of 233 slightly decreased to 231 plants. The countries in Asia still operate 120 supercomputer (132 in June). In addition to the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) operated "Tianhe-2" also managed the K Computer by Fujitsu in Japan at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science (fourth place) among the top ten.

Only little changes

Overall, there were among the first ten places little change since the last publication of the list of "Top 500" in June. The only new addition is a Cray-plant with a capacity of 3.57 petaflops, which is, according to the editors of the list at an undisclosed location in the United States in the service of the government.

IBM with four systems under Top Ten

IBM had dominated the list of the top 500 for a long time with its systems. In the current issue of American IT specialist and system builders brought four more of its assets in the top ten under. According to a report by "ZDnet" it is currently constructing together with the graphics card manufacturer Nvidia and the semiconductor and network specialist Mellanox on two new supercomputers, which will go into operation in 2017. 

 

IBM Blue Gene

Next Generation

On behalf of the US Department of Energy are the two systems "Sierra" and "Summit" will be built with a budget of 325 million dollars, it said. For commissioning them to come to a peak power of 100 ("Sierra") and 150 to 300 petaflops ("Summit"). Accordingly, "Sierra" is to be used at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, especially for simulations of nuclear weapons. "Summit" should at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and are used for civil and scientific purposes. 

The TOP500 list was created as a project for the June 1993 meeting in Mannheim, and then updated for the Supercomputing 93 conference held that November. The list goes back to the initiative of the Mannheim computer scientist Hans Meuer, who died in January 2014. 

Link

Supercomputer Top500

Happy Birthday 50 year’s BASIC

Happy Birthday 50 year’s BASIC, programming for the masses

In the early days of computer science, only a small elite could program

Back in 1982 I own my first computer which was a Casio pocket computer, a Casio FX-702P. The FX-702P features a single line dot matrix liquid crystal display with 20 characters. A 10-digit mantissa is displayed (including minus sign) however internal calculations use a 12-digit mantissa.
 

Dieter Hovorka first computer Casio FX-702P

The programming model employed is a special BASIC dialect. Ten programming areas are supported, P0 through P9. BASIC lines can be numbered from 1 through to 9999. Subroutines are supported, but passing parameters to subroutines is not supported. The subroutine call stack can be up to 10 deep. Both GOTO lines and subroutines can be addressed indirectly via line number calculation. FOR/NEXT structures can be nested up to eight times with a memory of 1,680 bytes.
 
Owning this pocket computer introduced me to the digital world of programming. It was in May 1982 when my father bought the pocket computer and brought it home. Nearly 20 years later after John G. Kemeny und Thomas E. Kurtz, two professors from the College in U.S. state New Hampshire, started the first BASIC program on a GE-255 from General Electric on the 1.May 1964, I started my digital carrier. Their program had only three command lines, the first line presented "10 Let X = (7+8)/3", in the second "20 PRINT X" and the third line ended with "30 END" The result was to display “5” as a result of the calculation.
 
10 Let X = (7+8)/3
20 PRINT X
30 END"  
 
BASIC was born. The name of BASIC ("Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") explains the intention of the two scientists. They wanted to make a "symbolic general-purpose programming for Beginners" available with "basic" fundamental.
At the high school kids who then took advantage of BASIC for their first steps in the computer world, belonged to the young Bill Gates. In the eighth grade the Lakeside School in Seattle, he gained access to a terminal, with which the students were able to take advantage of computing power at General Electric.
 
It took until the late 70s until the BASIC got attention. The first home computers from manufacturers such as Atari, Sinclair, Tandy or Schneider came with a so-called interpreter so that the BASIC programs were able to run on a sparsely-equipped hardware. For the triumphal procession of the BASIC-boom made from 1982, the Commodore 64, which carries with total sales of over 22 million units until today the title of "best-selling home computer of all time."

 

DOS

The first personal computer by IBM nearly stopped the proliferation of BASIC. Microsoft allowed PCs with the DOS operating system to equip an environment for BASIC but not as part of the starting equipment. Many BASIC dialects, especially the Microsoft product Visual Basic, where still relevant because they are relatively easy to write applications for Windows. When programming for macros for programs such as Excel, the BASIC technology is used till today.
 
In computer science BASIC was not without controversy. Conceptually and on the efficiency, BASIC could not keep up with other programming languages, critics also made repeatedly about the confusing spaghetti code, which is produced. Others complained that Visual Basic could never really break away from the platform Windows. However, BASIC is still considered one of the most widely used programming languages that is especially easy to learn - even if it only plays a minor role in the world of the Internet.