Supercomputer is measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating Point Operations Per Second)
Communications intelligence
The Cray C90 is what is termed as a "supercomputer". This means that it has a particularly high capacity and processing speed, allowing it to be used in situations where a lot of data needs to be processed at top speed.
A supercomputer is usually defined as a computer with at least 10 times the processing speed and at least 10 times the memory of the fastest standard commercially available model of computer. Supercomputers are traditionally optimized for high speed floating point mathematical operations as used in scientific, engineering, or image processing applications; not for alphanumeric processing or input/output speeds as might be used in business applications. As the technology of commercially available computers is always advancing, the definition of what is a supercomputer is also correspondingly always shifting. In other words, today's supercomputers are usually outperformed by far cheaper standard and more general purpose commercially available computers within a few years.
Anywhere from zero up to as many needed. A supercomputer is not defined by number of processors, but by processing speed (however achieved), typically measured in FLOPS (FLoating point Operations Per Second) although there are other measures. Normally to be called a supercomputer it must have a processing speed at least an order of magnitude faster than the fastest commonly available computers available when it is introduced.
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of contemporary processing capacity--particularly speed of calculation. The top five countries having supercompters are from least to most France, England, Japan, China and far superior in numbers the United States.
Mainframe computers have large memory storage. While minicomputers have small or less memory storage than mainframe computer. ... The processing speed of mainframe computer is faster than minicomputer. While the processing speed of minicomputer is slower than mainframe computer.
SUPERCOMPUTER
Supercomputers are commonly used for tasks that require massive computational power, such as weather forecasting, climate modeling, nuclear simulations, and drug discovery. These applications benefit from the high-speed processing and large-scale data analysis capabilities of supercomputers.
" FLOPS " = Floating Point operations Per Second
Climate models, Aerospace Modeling.
The differences between a microcomputer and a supercomputer is Processing power, Capabillities, Size goes Chronologically Up and Down and Up and Down
The new supercomputer developed in china in 2013 is called the NUDT Tianhe-2, and is currently the fastest supercomputer in the world. With a speed of 33.86 petaflops it is nearly twice as powerful as the previous record holder, the Cray Titan which had a speed of 17.59 petaflops.