Article
Article
Supercomputer
Article By:
Mizell, David W. Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, California.
Last reviewed:January 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.668550
A computer which, among existing general-purpose computers at any given time, is superlative, often in several senses: highest computation rate, largest memory, or highest cost. Predominantly, the term refers to the fastest “number crunchers,” that is, machines designed to perform numerical calculations at the highest speed that the latest electronic device technology and the state of the art of computer architecture allow.
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