What Is a Supercomputer? | The Supercomputing Series<br />A supercomputer is a computer that performs at or near the highest operational rate for computers. Traditionally, supercomputers have been used for scientific and engineering applications that must handle massive databases, do a great amount of computation or both. Advances like multicore processors and general-purpose graphics processing units have enabled powerful machines that could be called desktop supercomputers or GPU supercomputers.<br />Year Supercomputer Peak speed (Rmax) Location<br />2021 Sunway Oceanlite 1.05 exaFLOPS (unofficial) Qingdao, China<br />2021 Fujitsu Fugaku 442 PFLOPS Kobe, Japan<br />2018 IBM Summit 148.6 PFLOPS Oak Ridge, Tenn.<br />2018 IBM Sierra 94.6 PFLOPS Livermore, Calif.<br />2016 Sunway TaihuLight 93.01 PFLOPS Wuxi, China<br />2013 NUDT Tianhe-2 33.86 PFLOPS Guangzhou, China<br />2012 Cray Titan 17.59 PFLOPS Oak Ridge, Tenn.<br />2012 IBM Sequoia 17.17 PFLOPS Livermore, Calif.<br />2011 Fujitsu K computer 10.51 PFLOPS Kobe, Japan<br />2010 NUDT Tianhe-1A 2.566 PFLOPS Tianjin, China<br />2009 Cray Jaguar 1.759 PFLOPS Oak Ridge, Tenn.<br />2008 IBM Roadrunner 1.105 PFLOPS Los Alamos, N.M.
