Petascale computing


Petascale computing refers to computing systems capable of calculating at least 1015 floating point operations per second. Petascale computing allowed faster processing of traditional supercomputer applications. The first system to reach this milestone was the IBM Roadrunner in 2008. Petascale supercomputers are planned to be succeeded by exascale computers.

Definition

are a measure of computer performance. FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, however the standard measure used by the TOP500 supercomputer list ranks computers by 64 bit operations per second using the LINPACK benchmark.

History

The petaFLOPS barrier was first broken in 16 September 2007 by the distributed computing Folding@home project. The first single petascale system, the Roadrunner, entered operation in 2008.. The Roadrunner, built by IBM, had a sustained performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS. The Jaguar became the second computer to break the petaFLOPS milestone, later in 2008, and reached a performance of 1.759 petaFLOPS after a 2009 update.
By 2018, Summit had become the world's most powerful supercomputer, at 200 petaFLOPS.