10 Fastest Supercomputers In The World

Bangalore: We often show a tendency to wallow about the specifications and punch capabilities of our personal computers. But when it comes to supercomputers, the computing reaches astronomical figures leaving us think minimal about our PCs.

TOP500, which took the project of listing top 500 supercomputers in the world, updates its list twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputing Conference in June; the second one is presented in November at the ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference. Read on to know the 10 fastest super computers existing in the world now.     

#10 DARPA

Site: IBM Development Engineering
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: United States
Processor: POWER7 8C 3.836GHz,
Cores: 63360
Power: 3575.63 kW
Interconnect: Custom Interconnect
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 1.52 petaflops

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military. IBM's DARPA Trial Subset machine is new to the Top 10 list. It was No. 23 when it was ranked in June this year.  

#9 Fermi

Site: Cineca
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: Italy
Architecture: BlueGene/Q
Processor: Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz
Cores: 163840
Power: 821.88 kW
Interconnect: Custom Interconnect
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 1.73 petaflops
Date Created: 2012

The Fermi supercomputer is owned by Cineca, Italy's computing consortium of 54 universities. The supercomputer is based on IBM's BlueGene/Q architecture. It will be used for computational science of scale, and will allow Italian and European teams of researchers to perform computationally intensive, large-scale research projects attacking fundamental problems in science and engineering that require massive calculations, as said on ceneca.it web site.

#8 Tianhe-1A

Site: National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin
Manufacturer: NUDT
Country: China
Architecture: NUDT YH MPP
Processor: Xeon X5670 6C 2.93 GHz
Cores: 186368
Power: 4040.00 kW
Memory: 229376 GB
Interconnect: Proprietary
Compiler: icc
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 2.56 petaflops per second
Date Created: 2010

Tianhe in English means "Milky Way Number One”, it is Located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China. It was the fastest computer in the world from October 2010 to June 2011 and is one of the few Petascale supercomputers in the world. The supercomputer is useful in carrying out researches in petroleum exploration, solar energy, and performs aircraft simulation.

#7 Stampede

Site: Texas Advanced Computing Center/ university of Texas
Manufacturer: Dell
Country: United States of America
Architecture: PowerEdge C8220
Processor: Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.700GHz,
Cores: 204900
Memory: 184800 GB
Interconnect: Infiniband FDR
Compiler: Intel
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 2.6 petaflops
Date Created: 2012

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin is all gearing up to manufacture the next version of Stampede, by January 2013.  This would be world-class supercomputer with comprehensive computing and visualization capabilities as part of a National Science Foundation grant, as posted on TACC site.

#6 SuperMUC

Site: Leibniz Rechenzentrum
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: Germany
Architecture: iDataPlex DX360M4
Processor: Xeon E5-2680 8C 2.70GHz
Cores: 147456
Interconnect: Infiniband FDR
Power: 3422.67 kW
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 2.89 petaflops
Date Created: 2012

The supercomputer is to strengthen the position of Germany's Gauss Centre for Supercomputing in Europe by delivering outstanding compute power and integrating it into the European High Performance Computing ecosystem. With the operation of SuperMUC, LRZ will act as an European Centre for Supercomputing and will be Tier-0 centre of PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe.

The supercomputer is available to all European researchers to expand the frontiers of science and engineering, as stated in LRZ website.

#5 JUQUEEN

Site: Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: Germany
Architecture: BlueGene/Q
Processor: Power BQC 16C 1.600GHz
Cores: 393216
Power: 1970.00 kW
Memory: 393216 GB
Interconnect: Custom Interconnect
Operating System: Linux
Speed: 4.14 petaflops
Date Created: 2012

The Jülich Research Centre in Germany is home to the JuQUEEN, which is used for computational science, engineering, climatology, physics, and materials science. The super computer was Ranked No. 8 in June, JUQEEN was upgraded and is now the most powerful system in Europe.

# 4 Mira

Site: DOE/SC/Argonne National Laboratory
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: United States
Architecture: BlueGene/Q
Processor: Power BQC 16C 1.60GHz
Cores: 786432
Power: 3945.00 kW
Operating system: Linux
Speed: 8.16 petaflops per second
Date Created: 2011

Mira was constructed by IBM for Argonne National Laboratory's Argonne Leadership Computing Facility with the support of the United States Department of Energy, and partially funded by the National Science Foundation. The supercomputer is useful for scientific research, including studies in the fields of material science, climatology, seismology, and computational chemistry.

#3 K Computer

Site: RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS), Japan
Manufacturer: Fujitsu
Country: Japan
Processor: SPARC64 VIIIfx 2.0GHz
Cores: 705024
Power: 12659.89 kW
Memory: 1410048 GB
Operating system: Linux
Speed: 10.51 petaflops per second
Date Created: 2011

The K computer is named for Japanese word "kei", meaning 10 quadrillion (10¹⁶). The supercomputer is currently installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus in Kobe, Japan. The K computer is based on distributed memory architecture, with over 80,000 computer nodes. It is intended to have a variety of applications, including climate research, disaster prevention and medical research.

#2 Sequoia

Site: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, United States
Manufacturer: IBM
Country: United States
Architecture: BlueGene/Q
Processor: Power BQC 16C 1.60 GHz
Cores: 1572864
Power: 7890.00 kW
Memory: 1572864 GB
Operating system: Linux
Speed: 16.32 petaflops per second
Date Created: 2011

The supercomputer is manufactured by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC). It was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2011 and was fully deployed in June 2012.

Sequoia will be used primarily for nuclear weapons simulation, and also plays important role for scientific purposes such as astronomy, energy, study of the human genome, and climate change.

#1 Titan

Site: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Manufacturer: Cray Inc
Country: United States
Architecture: Cray XK7
Processor: Opteron 6274 16C 2.200GHz+ NVIDIA K20x
Cores: 560640
Power: 8209.00 kW
Memory: 710144 GB
Interconnect: Cray Gemini interconnect
Operating system: Cray Linux Environment
Speed: 17.59 petaflops
Date Created: 2012

Titan is developed by Cray Inc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the purpose of science projects. Titan is an upgrade of Jaguar, with addition NVIDIA K20x GPU to its CPU, gained more computational power. It was announced in October 2011 and became operational in October 2012. Titan will use its extraordinary computing power for study alternative and efficient energy, efficient engines, climate change, and identifying new materials. 

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10 Worst Cyberattacks in 2012

Bangalore: When the world was too busy to catch up their breath from new technological launches be it iPhone 5, Windows 8, Gmail’s 10 GB attachments or serious inroads into cloud connectivity which enabled working on the go, there were other elements of the tech-world snarling to pounce.

Cybercriminals too evolved to deal with new technology growth and designed clever ways to sneak away millions from unsuspecting consumers through malicious links, phishing scams and password hacks. The big company’s like Amazon, LinkedIn and others too put to embarrassment.   

Cybercrime prevention company ThreatMetrix has put together an infographic detailing the top 10 spookiest cyberattacks of the year so far. "With threats looming everywhere from banks and web browsers to online dating and social networking sites, this list is sure to leave you with goosebumps," the company says.

#10 Yahoo Voices

A hacker group called D33DS Company has dumped 453,492 usernames and passwords obtained in plaintext from a Yahoo! Voice service, formally known as Associated Content.

The usernames and passwords were posted online by the D33DS Company group. Apparently, hackers were able to get their hands on plaintext list of passwords and usernames using a MySQL injection attack.

#9 Android

The leading mobile platform in the world and its Google play sports about 700,000 apps. For hackers Android was too tempting an apple to resist, the result: currently about 198 million Android users’ memory cards are at the risk of wiping out clean with a malicious link or from a malicious app. Earlier this year the hackers developed a fake version of Instagram app which sent expensive text messages from the users’ phones.

#8 Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational diversified financial services company with operations around the world. It is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by assets and the largest bank by market capitalization. The bank’s website was recently hacked putting 70 million customers and 8.5 million active users’ data at risk.

Bank's Chief Financial Officer, Tim Sloan told Reuters that the cyber attacks were "pretty significant" but didn't cause customer losses or a major increase in expenses.

The group that calls itself the Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-din Al Qassam claimed credit for the attacks and said it to be a protest against the anti-Islam video posted on YouTube, reported Rueters.

#7 Amazon owned Zappos targeted

Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer owned by Amazon.com, got its internal network infiltrated by a cyber attacker.

More than 24 million customers personal information including: customers' names, e-mail addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of customers’ credit card numbers were at hackers’ mercy.

However, database that stores customers' critical credit card and other payment data was not affected or accessed.

#6 Microsoft Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer got vulnerable to hackers when a security hole which was discovered in September. The hackers targeted some of the users by installing malicious software on Windows systems and had accessed personal.

The attacks prompted the German government and security experts to urge people to temporarily stop using the browser, reported IBN Live. 

However Microsoft acted fast and fixed a security bug in Internet Explorer.

#5 Global Data Inc (Visa and Master Card)

Hackers breached data card processing systems and were successful in getting 1.5 million card numbers. However names, addresses and other data which could have led to massive money drain out, was not stolen. It was a very narrow escape.

#4 LinkedIn And eHormany

The professionals’ social networking siteLinkedIn and online dating site eHarmony were been hacked, about 64 million LinkedIn passwords were put at risk and about 30,000 passwords were cracked. About 1.5 million eHORMONY passwords were stolen and posted on an online password cracking forum. These combined attacks put the personal information of the million at risk.    

#3 Go Daddy

Go Daddy, the domain registrar and Web hosting firm, with more than 53 million registered domain names had suffered major outages following a major cyber attack, which potentially would have taken millions of sites down with it. The activist group Anonymous later claimed the responsibility however Go Daddy denied it. But it did result in many firms going for Go Daddy for a domain registration though.

#2 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Thousands of employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had their Social Security numbers, bank-routing information and addresses exposed in a cyber breach of an internal computer database, reported Bloomberg. It compromised 8000 employees’ and others’ social security numbers and banking information.

#1 Gostshell

An Anonymous-related group, Ghostshell leaked 120,000 records from the top universities by injecting malware and vulnerable links.