The original Cray supercomputer
In the last decade supercomputers were dressed up versions of Intel’s x86 machines, but increasingly supercomputers are borrowing innovations (and silicon in the form of ARM-based chips or DSPs) from the mobile and big data realm to add speed without guzzling too much power.
Prior to this century many supercomputers really were a different animal entirely, sporting specialty chips and software. But the industry turned to commodity chips in the early 2000s. Now, to meet the demands of exascale computing at low power, chipmakers are taking inspiration from the cloud computing and mobile industry. via GigaOM
