CSC/ECE 506 Spring 2012/1a mw

Comparisons Between Supercomputers

Supercomputers are specialized computers that are generally very expensive, not available for general purpose use and are used in computations where large amounts of numerical processing is required <ref>http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/supercomputer Definition of supercomputer</ref>, <ref>http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/supercomputer.html Definition of supercomputer</ref>.

Supercomputers are generally compared qualitatively using floating point operations per second, or FLOPS. Using standard prefixes, higher levels of FLOPS can be specified as the computing power of supercomputers increases. For example, KiloFLOPS for thousands of FLOPS and MegaFLOPS for millions of FLOPS <ref>http://kevindoran.blogspot.com/2011/04/comparing-performance-of-supercomputers.html Doran, Kevin (April 2011) Comparing the performance of supercomputers</ref>.

A software package called LINPACK is a standard approach to testing or benchmarking supercomputers by solving a dense set of linear systems of equations using the Gauss method. <ref>http://www.top500.org/project/linpack LINPACK defined</ref>. However, LINPACK benchmarking software isn't only used to benchmark supercomputers, it can also be used to benchmark a typical user computer <ref>http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?197835-IntelBurnTest-The-new-stress-testing-program Intel Benchmark Software</ref>.

Section 1

Development of the concept your article describes can be created in sections and subsections.

Section 1, Subsection 1

This is a subsection of section 1. Obviously, you name each of your sections and subsections as appropriate for your article.

Section 1, Subsection 2

Like an outline, you shouldn't have a single section or subsection. Your subsections can go many levels deep!

Section 2

Another section for your article.

Section N

Create as many sections and subsections as necessary to support your article.

Conclusion/Summary

Articles generally end with a conclusion or summary section.

Definitions

For any definitions where you don't have inline hypertext links to the definition you can place the definition of those terms here.

References

Your references go here. You should allow the WIKI to create your references list automatically by using inline citations.

<references />