What is a Supercomputer?

A supercomputer is similar to a personal or notebook computer, but far more powerful. For example, TACC’s largest supercomputer, Ranger, has a peak performance of about 504 trillion

operations per second, which is about 30,000 times more powerful than a desktop computer. Ranger also rapidly reads and writes data to hard disks, holding several thousand times more data than a notebook computer. The Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin has several supercomputers, which are used by researchers in Texas and around the world. See our list of systems here.

People working in many kinds of careers and industry use advanced computing systems to solve problems that impact our lives everyday, including scientists, artists, engineers, and medical and health professionals, among many others. Supercomputers are used in many industries, including manufacturing, transportation, petroleum, weather forecasting, and emergency response services…to name just a few!

Accurately forecast global and local weather.
Plan a city’s emergency response to flooding (right down to the city block).
Design and test many forms of transportation, including cars, busses, trains, and airplanes.
Formulate medication and look inside the human body (MRI, PET, CT).
Create imaginative and realistic animation. Shrek and Cars are good examples.
Manufacture and package consumer goods like diapers, detergent, and even potato chips!

However, a supercomputer is only one element of an advanced computing center. A diverse team of scientists and professionals make an advanced computing center work and serve researchers across many areas of research. That’s what we do here at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. We invite you to explore all that TACC has to offer for students, educators, and the local community!

TACC staff produce visualizations that are visually evocative and scientifically accurate. Researchers depend on visualizations to explore and interact with large, complicated data sets. Click here to view our Visualization Gallery.