When I first heard the University of Illinois had a
supercomputer, I was not at all surprised. Our school is becoming so
technologically advanced that it didn’t even faze me that it was also one of
the fastest public supercomputer out there. But what makes a supercomputer
impressive? Because, honestly, when I first saw Blue Waters, the supercomputer
on campus, it didn’t look all that great. I pictured a huge computer screen
with a lot of buttons, but it ended up looking like black gym lockers. I guess it’s what behind the cabinet that
matters.
Since Blue Waters is public, 7% of it is saved for students
and professors at the university to do research. The other 93% can be used by
anyone by simply applying for it, and receiving a password in the postal mail to
get into the system. After you have received the password, you now have access
to over 235 cabinets of supercomputer from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. What do you get for that? Try a data
storage that can hold 380 quadrillion bytes of data. Or 49,000 processors
working together in order to, “crunch through numbers quickly” Trish Barker, a
worker at NCSA and an University of Illinois alum says, simply. How about being
able to do quadrillions of calculations per second? I guess the saying, “Cant
judge a book by its cover” applies here.
Another impressive
part of Supercomputers is the cost. Blue Waters is funded by the US National
Science Foundation and cost $208 million dollars to build. In order for the
university to receive this money, they had to submit a proposal with a detailed
explanation of what they will be doing with the supercomputer and compete
against other organizations in order to get the grant. I guess that proves I go
to the smartest and best institution out there.
I really like how you gave background to the supercomputer. You also talked about it's importance to the community and UIUC. Also, you really showed why "super" is in the term supercomputer with how much information it can hold. It was an interesting article. Good job!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Great minds think alike, as I also chose this topic. I am blown away by the fact that you can clearly quote Ms. Barker months after the fact. While I do enjoy your post, my biggest critique of it would be the final paragraph appeared rushed. The process by which University of Illinois was able to receive the money for the grant, only two sentences about the topic does not do it justice. A suggestion would be to write less about how it is available 24/7 and more about the grant process.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great post to read, as it renewed my interest in something I had already commented on in a completely different light. I truly enjoy reading post like these, thanks for posting!
I like how you wrote your article because there was a sense of whimsical tone to it. The tone made your post really fun to read.
ReplyDelete