High Performance Computers (HPC) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

High Performance Computers (HPC) - Research Paper Example Power efficiency has not been a focus of most HPC systems till now. Power consumed during the operating of High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark is, contrary to the conventionally prevailing concept, near the power used by a subset of scientific workload that is typically computer intensive. This makes the HPL suitable for use in power measurement, though it is not recommendable for performance measurement in most cases (Kamil, Shalf, and Strohmaier, n.d.). The efficiency and performance of HPCs can be assessed from their composition, HPCs have all the essential elements found in the regular desktop computers including memory, operating system, disk, and processors, and more. HPCs can be understood as clusters of computers. Each computer in each cluster has anywhere from one to four processors, with each processor having between two and four cores. Individual computers forming part of a cluster are called as nodes. A small business may have a cluster of four or more nodes, with the number of cores being at least 16. Businesses commonly have cluster sizes ranging from 16 to 64 nodes and the number of cores ranges from 64 to 256 (inside HPC, 2014). HPCs show their efficiency with the mutual functioning of the individual nodes in the clusters. Such efficiency can easily solve problems of much complex nature than what can be solved by ordinary desktop computers. The nodes are able to work together meaningfully by interacting with each othe r. Computers talk over networks to each other and business clusters have a variety of options of computer network. In terms of software, two that are employed in most HPCs are Windows and Linux. Currently, HPCs installations are dominated by Linux which can partly be attributed to the legacy of HPC in large scale machines, Unix, and supercomputing. The kind of operating system suitable for use in HPC depends upon the kinds of applications run over them. HPCs in the future will be more efficient. Petaflop