an extremely powerful computer designed to perform trillions of calculations per second, used for weather prediction and scientific research.
From 'super-' (above, beyond) and 'computer' (calculating machine). Emerged in the 1960s-70s as computing power increased exponentially and specialized ultra-fast machines were needed.
Supercomputers are measured in 'petaflops'—that's a quadrillion floating-point operations per second. The fastest modern supercomputers do more calculations in one second than all the humans on Earth could do in 1,000 years. They're what makes predicting hurricanes and simulating protein folding possible.
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