You may not have had the opportunity to see the world’s fastest computer up close, but it’s more likely that this technology has impacted your life in one way or another. Do you love watching movies? Like driving cars? Or are you content with your doctor’s services? You’ve got a supercomputer to thank.
Supercomputers play a critical role in helping us make sense of multiple unprecedented amounts of data. They have been used to tackle very complex challenges that would have been impossible. The world’s fastest computers have changed the way scientists forecast weather. You no longer need weather forecasters to determine which day the wind blows but a supercomputer to simulate the damage from decades of climate change and do long-term forecasting.
As their name implies, supercomputers perform quadrillion operations every second on unimaginable volumes of data.
Here are some of the top ways the world’s fastest computers have changed our lives.
- Weather
Most of us have had an unpleasant experience with unexpected rain or heat waves. Lots of molecules keep bumping into each other in the earth’s atmosphere every moment, creating weather. Predicting such kinds of interactions requires billions of calculations. Fortunately, our world’s fastest computers hold the potential to help improve how we harness our diverse energy sources as well as improve the accuracy of our weather predictions.
- Medicine
The world’s fastest computers can process the entire medical database from patients’ health history, experimental lab notes, and clinical trials, which helps to verify the preliminary results—Got a Covid shot this year? Supercomputers played a key role in developing Covid vaccines and are still working towards finding treatments and cures for the virus. Medical researchers are using AI and high-performance computing to create digital twins of human organs.
- Automobiles
Are you tired of spending lots of your money at the pumps? Supercomputers can help ease the strain on your wallet by improving the efficiency of existing combustion engines. For several years, the world’s fastest computers have been helping cars become faster, safer, and more energy efficient. These computers helped design longer-lasting electric vehicles as we move into the era of autonomous vehicles.
- Financial Services
Have you ever used your credit card to purchase a product in a foreign country and received a phone call seconds later from your bank requesting you to verify the purchase? Well, that’s because the world’s fastest computers have your back. Financial services institutions use the fastest computers to access credit risk, verify regulatory compliance, detect cyberattacks, evaluate investments, predict pricing, and many more. With continuous technology developments, it won’t be a surprise to speak with an AI-driven bot who will give you the appropriate directions the next time you call your bank’s customer service line.